


When We Fell

by shadow_djinni



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Technology, Canonical Character Death, Crash Landing, Galra Empire, Galra Military Stuff, Light Angst, Mild Injury, Past Sendak/Haxus, some character background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2018-12-23 16:16:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11993391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_djinni/pseuds/shadow_djinni
Summary: Or, what Sendak and Haxus were up to between the wreck of their cruiser and their raid on the Castle of Lions.





	1. Freefall

There was no way the escape pod was going to clear the blast radius of the exploding ship. Haxus had three different readouts on the pod’s control panel and a siren screaming in his ears to tell him that. The screen giving him visuals on the ship showed that Voltron hadn’t noticed their flight yet--the massive robot was busy shoving one lion’s-head fist through the cruiser’s hull and blasting away, each strike closer to the fuel tanks than the last, and when they finally hit those, the ship was going down.

“Haxus,” Sendak grated from the opposite side of the pod. He sounded unfazed, but a quick glance showed the commander’s ears were flattened against his head.

“Brace yourself,” Haxus replied. “The ship’s going to blow. Shockwave eminent in--” Voltron smashed through the fuel tanks-- “Five ticks!”

He was a little off. The pod pitched violently, rattling as shrapnel pummeled the hull. Haxus gripped the control panel like his life depended on it, bracing his feet against the floor to keep from sliding. Behind him, Sendak hit a wall and, from the thud and the grunt that followed, the floor too. You didn’t swear at your commander, but Haxus desperately wanted to. Of course Sendak had thought he wouldn’t need to brace.

The pod leveled out, and then the siren was screaming at him again. They were descending. Fast. Too fast. His claws clattered on the controls as he dismissed warning screens, pulled up diagnostics.

“What’s going on?” Sendak demanded.

“Left thrusters are offline.”

“Can you get them back before we crash?”

“I’m working on it.” The diagnostic panel flashed at him. “Not fully. There’s shrapnel in the emissions ports. I can get them twenty percent functional--”

“Do it!” The pod lurched again, and Haxus heard Sendak slide across the floor, armor screeching off steel. “Now!”

Haxus didn’t waste the breath it would take to answer. He pulled up the thruster controls. Another warning flashed, telling him all the risks of putting the left thrusters back into commission. Explosion was top on that list. He ignored it, and the alert from the right thrusters indicating that they too had taken damage. He felt the thrusters re-engage as a jolt through the floor and, moments later, a slowing of their fall.

“Thrusters are back online, but we’re still going to land hard.” The altitude warning was up now. Impact eminent. Ten ticks remaining. Nothing he could do to stop it. “Brace!”

Sendak grunted in response. Haxus dropped, tucking himself beneath the control panel and hoping it would be enough to stop any debris from falling on him. Five ticks. Four. Three. Two. One--

The pod jerked violently, slamming Haxus up against the underside of the control panel and then back against the floor as it bounced off the planet’s surface. He braced himself more securely against the legs, hanging on as the pod skipped three or four more times before coming to a rest. Dust and chunks of the ceiling rained down, clanging off the top of the control panel. Aside from that, the pod was deathly silent. Haxus’s innards clenched.

Then, hidden by the dust cloud, Sendak coughed like he was trying to eject his lungs. A tick later, he gasped out, “Haxus, report in.” Haxus didn’t respond, still trying to get his breath back. “Haxus. Answer me.”

“I’m here,” he wheezed, crawling out from under the control panel. 

The air in the pod was thick with white dust--insulation from the walls, most likely. Not a good sign. It meant structural damage, probably serious enough that the pod would need major repairs if it were to ever fly again. He waved an arm, trying to clear the air, and coughed when the dust hit the back of his throat. The dust settled enough to give some visibility, and Haxus choked again, this time to smother his laughter. Sendak was coated in it from head to toe. The only part of him visible and its proper color was his left eye, the organic one. He was wiping at the cybernetic on the right, trying to clear the dust from the lens and only succeeding in smearing it. The commander blinked at him, looking dazed.

“Are you alright?”

It took Haxus a moment to respond, gathering his thoughts and running a mental checklist of his physical condition. “I’m fine. You?”

“A bit battered,” Sendak replied, rubbing the back of his head. “But I’m alright.”

Haxus scowled. ‘A bit battered,’ in Sendak-speak, meant ‘I feel like I’ve been used as a practice dummy by a band of recruits in basic,’ and in this case it also meant he hadn’t been able to brace himself for impact and had probably been thrown around the pod. “You’ll have to let me look you over, make sure you aren’t injured.”

“I said, I’m alright,” came the snarled response.

Haxus dropped it. “Let’s see where we landed,” he suggested.

Sendak hesitated, then nodded, which was even more worrying. Usually he didn’t like Haxus taking the reins for anything, which Haxus ascribed to his being one of if not the youngest commanders in the fleet--and was definitely a new development since his promotion, because he hadn't minded listening to Haxus before--so his acquiescence was another indication that something was wrong. He pressed his palm to the panel on the door, which hissed open with no resistance. A small mercy.

There was a second small mercy waiting outside. Arus’s sun was half-sunk beneath the horizon, dim enough not to blind Haxus when he emerged. A third mercy, not quite so small--they’d landed in a canyon of some sort, out of sight of Voltron’s base but near enough that the plume of smoke from the ship’s wreckage was clearly visible. Good. They could scavenge the wreck after dark--historic records said that the Alteans had been a diurnal race, and if Champion’s sleeping patterns and physiology had been any indication, his species functioned during the day as well. None of their enemies would be out investigating at night, if they even thought that he and Sendak had survived.

The commander stumbled out of the pod and, apparently thinking Haxus wasn’t looking, leaned heavily against the panel beside the door. His ears were lowered, but Haxus couldn’t tell if it was just stress or pain from the angle--the two looked very similar on Sendak. 

“Commander Sendak,” he said, keeping his voice low. “If you’ll allow me to--”

“No,” Sendak snapped, cutting him off. “Check the pod. See what’s running and what needs repairs. I’ll secure a perimeter.”

“Sendak--”

“Haxus. Don’t. We need to get that pod out of sight before sunrise, before Voltron can come looking for us. I want to know what needs repaired, and quickly.”

The glare and the soundness of his reasoning was all it took. “Yes, sir,” Haxus said. He ducked back inside the pod, where the dust had finally settled to the floor, and tapped on the control panel. It flickered to life, which was a relief, and Haxus set a full system scan.

What came back was...not good. The shrapnel in the left thrusters had overheated them, and they would need serious repairs to work again. Communications and navigation were both offline--he suspected damage to the transmitter, if not the wiring. He had cabin lighting controls, but the dust was, as he’d suspected, insulation, and the life support systems were damaged. The air filtration and recycling system was offline, as were the thermoregulators--the pod was going to get awfully hot and stuffy when the sun came back up. The biometric scanners were also offline, but according to their diagnostic, they would be a quick fix and not require spare parts. Not so for the other two. The ship would have parts to repair them, but whether or not those parts were intact…no. They were moving the pod to cover first. He could worry about life support systems later, after he repaired the thrusters.

Haxus returned his attention to the thruster diagnostics. Burnt-out wiring, shrapnel in the emissions jets, heat damage to the tubes...at least the right thrusters were intact. They showed some minor damage to the jets, most likely caused by shrapnel, but nothing had caught and jammed. Small mercies. He grabbed the pod’s toolkit, exited, and scrambled underneath.

Left thrusters first. A large chunk of the cruiser’s hull was lodged in the jet, bending it out of shape. The edges and walls were blackened, and his sensitive nose wrinkled at the scent of smoke. He pulled the pry-bar from the toolkit, wedged it behind the shrapnel, and wrenched at it until the twisted metal came free. It clunked down a hand's breadth from his head. He shoved it aside, enjoying the clatter as it slid across the ground and out from under the pod, and set to work pulling the burned wiring from the inside of the jet and replacing it with fresh wiring from the toolkit, and pushing the warped walls of the jet back into position.

Heavy footsteps came to a stop near his head, and without thinking, he said, “Sendak? Would you give me a hand with this?”

Sendak’s enormous prosthetic slid under the pod. It scraped against the undercarriage and lit the space with the glow from the quintessence chain that linked it to the attachment on the commander’s shoulder.

Haxus groaned. “That wasn’t funny the first time you did it, and it isn’t now.”

Outside of his range of vision, Sendak huffed with amusement. “I secured our perimeter. What do you need me to do?”

“Get under here and bend the right jets back into shape. They were damaged in the blast.”

The prosthetic slid back out, and a moment later the commander wedged himself under the pod on the other side. Haxus tipped his ears, listening for any sign of distress, and, sure enough, Sendak hissed in pain as he pushed himself further under to reach the jets. He hurriedly pushed his jet back into its proper position and slid back out, then padded around to Sendak’s side. The commander’s feet just barely poked out from under the pod, and Haxus stood so he was straddling them. When he slid out a couple doboshes later, Haxus sat down, hard, and pinned him in place.

Sendak glared, his ears flattening aggressively. “Get off.”

“Not until you let me check your injuries. I know you were hurt when we landed.”

“I’ve told you, I’m fine--”

“Don’t lie to me. What are you going to do if Voltron shows up and you can’t fend them off because you were wounded?”

Slowly, those massive ears tilted from aggression to submission. “Alright. Just let me up first. You’ll need to remove my armor.”

Haxus would have teased him for it if Sendak’s inability to remove his own armor hadn’t stemmed from the large, unwieldy prosthetic he was using instead of his normal, more functional one, which had gone down with the ship. The oversized, clumsy thing was an experimental prototype the Druids had fitted Sendak with the last time they’d stopped in at the Galactic Hub, and both of them had critiques of it--namely, that it was too large and awkwardly-shaped to be useful outside of a fight and made a clumsy weapon during one. He undid the latches on the commander’s armor with ease, then hesitated, fingers lingering on the opening for Sendak’s under-suit. Sendak nodded, and Haxus removed that as well, peeling it to the waist.

Once that was down, the injuries were obvious. The compression from the suit had held his organic arm in position, but once freed it looked twisted out of the socket--forward, fortunately, which would be easier to fix. It was impossible to see bruises through Sendak’s thick fur, but a quick brush over his chest and back earned startled gasps of pain that said Haxus would need to look them over more carefully, to make sure it was just bruising and not broken ribs. And there was a lump swelling on the back of his skull where he’d obviously smacked his head on something, though he was showing no other signs of a concussion.

“And your legs?” Haxus asked. 

“They’re fine--” Sendak started, but cut himself off when Haxus glowered. “...My knees might be a bit bruised, but nothing’s broken.”

Haxus nodded. “Alright. I’m going to put your shoulder back in its socket. Lie down on your back.”

Sendak complied, and Haxus crouched next to him and tried to remember what little medical training he’d received back in basic. Most dislocations were remedied with the soldier on his stomach, but Haxus hadn’t wanted to risk it in case Sendak’s ribs were broken and the pressure drove them into vital organs. He bent Sendak’s elbow to 90 degrees and then, slowly, rotated his shoulder outward. Sendak yowled and cringed, and Haxus flinched a bit, jerking the arm and tearing another cry of pain from the commander. He released Sendak’s arm with one hand and went for his ear, rubbing at the base until Sendak’s gasps of pain faded to panting. His eye squeezed shut, whole face taut with pain and breath ragged.

“Just a bit longer,” Haxus said, returning his attention to the arm.

“You...can always just cut it off...if you can’t get it back in place,” Sendak ground out.

“I will not amputate your arm over a dislocation,” Haxus huffed in reply, and rotated Sendak’s arm a little further. The muscles in his shoulder jumped and spasmed, writhing under the fur. Sendak’s fangs sank into his lower lip to keep from crying out again. Deep blue blood welled up around his teeth.

Several long, tense doboshes later, the arm jerked up and back into place. It took a few more ticks for the muscles around it to stop twitching and jerking, during which Haxus kept his hold on Sendak’s arm. It wouldn’t do for the larger Galra to make any hasty moves and dislocate his shoulder again, not after all the work they’d just put into setting it. Eventually the spasms subsided, and both of them slumped against the stony ground, breathing heavily. Haxus opened his eyes a tick or two later, counting his breaths to calm down. Six ticks in, pause for two ticks, eight ticks out. Repeat. Sendak was still gasping on the ground beside him, thick-furred chest heaving like he couldn’t get enough air. Haxus reached for him, claws easily brushing through the thick fur at the commander’s ruff to scrape against the skin beneath. Sendak tilted his head, pressing the side of his face against Haxus’s palm, and Haxus resisted the urge to smile. 

They sat like that a couple ticks longer, and then Haxus scrambled to his feet. “I’m going to get a brace for your shoulder and a cold pack from the first aid supplies. Do not move.”

Sendak cracked his eyelid open, managing a smirk. “I don’t recall dying and putting you in charge,” he said.

Well, if he was making jokes, he was fine. Asshole. But, then again, Sendak used death humor as a coping mechanism, and if he’d learned anything during their stint as crewmates, before the campaign that had cost Sendak his arm and won him the attention of Emperor Zarkon himself, it was that he coped more aggressively when he was injured or anxious. Maybe he wasn’t alright. Or maybe Haxus was just overthinking things, as usual. Not that his overthinking hadn’t saved lives before, but usually it just made him anxious or ended with him off on a tangent and Sendak putting one of his frankly enormous hands over Haxus’s mouth to shut him up-- 

He shook himself out of his thoughts and re-entered the pod, opening the hatch for the first aid supplies. The cold packs were easy to find--practically at the top of the kit--but the braces were buried somewhere near the bottom, and looking them over, Haxus had his doubts about whether or not the brace was going to fit. The average Galra soldier was significantly shorter than Sendak, and much slimmer, and most equipment the military provided was designed to fit the average. He’d just have to hope the largest setting would be big enough, that was all. He paused, studying the inside of the cabinet, and then grabbed and activated one of the handheld biometric scanners. It wouldn’t be as precise as the pod’s scanner, but it would be enough to get a read on Sendak’s other injuries.

Sendak was sitting up by the time Haxus exited the pod--of course he was, he hadn’t listened to anyone even when they’d both been grunts--and had finally gotten the insulation dust off the lens of his eye. He was holding the injured shoulder awkwardly against his body, and his ears were tilted to an angle that definitely said ‘pain’. Haxus sighed.

“That arm had better still be in its socket,” he said warningly, sitting down next to Sendak and ratcheting the straps on the brace as far out as they would go.

“It is,” Sendak replied, flattening his ears as Haxus strapped the brace around his upper arm and shoulder. The chest band just barely fit around his broad torso--Haxus had to actively fight with it to get it to close. Then he squeezed the cold packs to activate them and draped them over Sendak’s shoulder. The commander slumped bonelessly, head lolling on his neck and tension fleeing his limbs. Haxus just barely managed to keep him from flopping over in the dirt.

On second thought, having Sendak lying down might make getting a scan easier--no contortions of muscle to interfere with the handheld scanner’s weaker beam. Haxus lowered him slowly, then took a step back and aimed the scanner at Sendak’s chest. A red beam of light flashed from the end of the device. Haxus ran it quickly over Sendak's torso, then sat himself down to analyze the results. He heaved a sigh of relief. No broken bones, just bruising. His armor had done its job after all.

“Update me on the status of the pod,” Sendak said. Haxus jumped, and glanced at him. Sendak hadn’t moved yet, lying still with his organic eye closed and, judging by the position of the rim, the aperture of the cybernetic shut as well.

“Nothing good. I think the thrusters are repaired enough to move it to cover, but navigation, communications, and the life support systems are all offline, and there appears to be some structural damage to the pod itself. All that dust came from the insulation in the hull.”

“How much of that can we repair?”

“There should be spare parts for comms and navigation in the pod itself. We may be able to scavenge parts for the life support systems from the cruiser, depending on what condition the wreck is in, but I don’t know how much of it will be left intact enough to salvage.” He hesitated. “Or if anything is left. Sendak, we may not be getting off this planet after all.”

Sendak huffed. “That sounds familiar. Now where have you told me that before?”

“The Sekir campaign.”

“And we’re not dead on Sekir, are we?”

“No.”

“Then we’ll get off this planet too. Triumph or death.”

“Triumph or death,” Haxus echoed. 

Arus’s sun finally sank below the horizon, dropping the light from ‘bright but tolerable’ to ‘Galra comfort zone’ in a matter of ticks. Sendak didn’t move--probably gathering his energy for when he did decide to get up--and Haxus sat patiently until the last of the golds and oranges in the sky faded out to red. His ears caught the soft click-whir of Sendak’s eye’s aperture opening, and then the commander heaved himself upright and began pulling his under-suit back up. Haxus waited, avoiding looking at him, until Sendak literally snarled in frustration when he realized he wouldn’t have enough range of motion in his shoulder to get his suit back in place. Listening to him getting aggravated over not being able to do something was one of the perks of Haxus’s position--Sendak made awful, hilarious noises when he got angry. He sounded like he was choking on a hairball, and Haxus could make that comparison because he’d heard it happen before. Long, thick fur was a choking hazard.

“Haxus,” Sendak grumbled.

Haxus turned to look at him and couldn’t restrain a laugh. “How did you manage to get yourself tangled in it?”

“I don’t know.” A pause. Ears lowered. “Help me.”  
********************************************************************************************************

They reached the wreckage of the cruiser a varga later, after moving the pod under the cover of an overhanging rock. There was nothing that could be done about the crater from the crash, but Sendak hoped it could be mistaken for something natural--especially after he and Haxus spent half the varga clearing up chunks of metal from the crash site. His lieutenant had complained, but he knew they couldn’t be too cautious. They were alone, with a damaged pod, no way to call for backup, and their best fighter injured. Not to say that Haxus wasn’t a competent fighter in his own right, he was just better with tech than combat, and knowing that Champion was with the Voltron paladins made Sendak very, very reluctant to have Haxus anywhere near a potential fight. Without Haxus’s mechanical expertise, he would be stuck here on this gritty, wasteland planet.

Just from looking at it, Sendak could tell salvaging parts from the ship would be...interesting. The cruiser was in two parts, thanks to a blast from one of Voltron’s hands (heads?), lying a quarter-klik apart after their fall from the atmosphere. He glanced up at the planet’s large, nearly-full moon, wishing he knew how to measure time by it so they could be out before dawn.

“This will go more quickly if we split up and each search half of the ship,” Sendak said.

Haxus flattened his ears. “That’s a bad idea. I may need your assistance to move debris, and you might need me should your arm give out.”

It was sound reasoning, but Sendak didn’t like it. “We don’t know how long this planet’s rotational cycle is. I would rather not risk being caught out here when the sun comes up and the enemy emerges.”

“You think they’ll come directly to the crash site?”

“I think there’s a possibility. If I brought down an enemy ship within striking distance of my base, my first move would be to check the wreck for survivors, at the very least to make sure none of my enemies remained alive to attack me or deliver information to their higher-ups. If the Voltron paladins are intelligent, they will investigate our cruiser sooner rather than later.”

“All the same, I would be more comfortable if we stayed together. If Voltron does catch us out here, we will be safer if we can fight as a team.”

Haxus had a point there. “Alright,” Sendak said. He started down the slope to the near half of the cruiser, the half containing the bridge. Haxus scrambled after him, pebbles skittering past as the shorter Galra slipped and skidded.

The inside of the wreck was still warm from the crash, just enough to make it uncomfortable. Sendak went in first, eyeing the walls. He half expected them to cave in at any moment. Haxus followed a few paces behind, prodding at panels and scanners to see if they still worked and grumbling under his breath when they didn’t.

They ran across the first cluster of sentries a couple rooms in. The droids were a tangle of metal limbs and damaged blasters, sprawled in an eerily corpse-like fashion across the floor. Haxus just walked around them, checking the panel on the far side of the room. Sendak paused and nudged the pile with the toe of his boot. Nothing. Then the lights on three faceplates lit up, glowing magenta as the sentries reactivated and began to move. Haxus shrieked, and Sendak looked up from the robot pile on the floor to his wide-eyed lieutenant.

“I--I didn’t realize they were still operational,” he said, shame-faced.

Sendak chuffed. “Maybe you should kick them next time to check,” he replied. Then his brain kicked into gear. “Wait a tick. Haxus, if some of the sentries are still working--”

“--Then we can keep our attention on repairing the pod and getting in contact with the main fleet instead of worrying about security,” Haxus finished. “They may not keep the paladins out, but we’ll be ready for them when they get past the sentries.” The three operational ones finally worked free of the pile of broken sentries, lurching to their feet. None of them was in good condition, but they were working.

“I’m going to see if I can find any more functional sentries,” Sendak said. “Keep looking for any active panels to check the cruiser’s life supports for working parts.”

“On it,” Haxus said.

Sendak waited until he was out of earshot of the room before breaking into a sprint. He knew Haxus would have scolded him for it, something about running not being good for his bruised ribs, but what Haxus didn’t know would only hurt Sendak. Pain was a temporary condition anyway; he’d already suppressed the ache in his shoulder, and hurrying would get them clear of this half of the wreck much more quickly. Saying he wasn’t comfortable would be the understatement of the cycle. If there was one thing his training had taught him, it was to not come back to a location the enemy could trace you to unless it was absolutely secure, and that was the one thing the ruined cruiser wasn’t. There was no way to secure it. It was big and broken open like an egg, and all of his training, all of his instincts screamed to get out now.

He located another fully functional sentry, one functional airborne drone, and one sentry that was damaged enough to be worthless in a fight but could be stripped for parts back at the pod before he met back up with Haxus at the bridge. The lieutenant had somehow managed to get the main control panel up and running, and when he heard Sendak come onto the bridge, he turned and shot Sendak the most delighted look.

“Good news, at last,” Haxus said. “The air filtration system and thermoregulators are still intact, and the power backup is intact and functioning.”

“Excellent,” Sendak said, and meant it. “Can we retrieve it?”

“It might be a bit much for you to carry,” Haxus replied, eyeing him dubiously.

“Not me. The sentries can handle the heavy lifting.”

“How many more have you found?”

“One fully operational, one for salvage, and a drone.” Haxus’s eyes lit with unabashed glee at that, and Sendak headed him off before he could go on a tangent about sentry repair. “We should retrieve the crystal and any parts you might need for the life support systems and check the other half of the ship, quickly.”

Haxus saluted and hurried for the nearest vent. Sendak waved the sentries after him and descended, heading down into the bowels of the ship, where the backup power system was stored. Every battle cruiser in the fleet was required to keep a Balmera crystal on board as a power backup, just in case the quintessence fuel system failed. Out in the black, power loss could be fatal within a few vargas. Sendak had assumed the crystal had been shattered when the ship went down. Finding it intact was a miracle. He shot a quiet thank-you to whatever being was watching over him from the Astral and ordered the sentries to uncouple the crystal from its base and bring it along with them. As an afterthought, he grabbed a set of power cables from their hiding place in the base and slung them over his shoulder. They would come in handy somewhere.

The back half of the cruiser--well, back third, if you wanted to be technical--was in worse shape than the front half. The fuel tanks had been located back there, and the back half had exploded and crashed rather than just crashing like the front half. Sendak was on edge, but also itching with anticipation. Their quarters had been located in the back part of the ship, and he’d left his preferred cybernetic arm tucked under his bunk beside its repair kit that morning since Haxus had suggested trying on the prototype one last time before they gave it up entirely. He regretted that now, with the clunky prosthetic weighing down his shoulder. 

He regretted it more when the only way in they found proved just narrow enough that his prosthetic got caught on the way in. Sendak wrenched at it, wincing at the strain to his left shoulder, then grabbed hold with his biological hand and tugged. Stuck.

“...Haxus?” he called, turning to his lieutenant...or, rather, to the space Haxus had inhabited when he’d gotten stuck. Haxus had vanished into the soot-blackened interior of the ship. “Haxus!” Nothing. He was gone.

Sendak snarled and returned his attention to the prosthetic. If he hadn’t tried to pull it in earlier, he probably could have forced it back out. As it was, the ragged edge of the hole he’d climbed through was caught in a groove in the prosthetic’s surface. The other side of the prosthetic wedged tight against the other side of the hole. He shoved at it experimentally. No give. He couldn’t brace against it, not with the scaldingly hot ribbon of quintessence linking the forearm piece to the one on his shoulder. If he turned the prosthetic off he could probably shove it back out the way it had come in, but there was no guarantee it would turn back on. But maybe…

He grabbed the prosthetic again, tensed the link between the two pieces, braced one foot against the wall, and pushed off. No give. He tried again, a little more aggressively, and the prosthetic gave a little, metal scraping on metal at a pitch that made his ears ache. Sendak sighed and braced his other foot against the wall too, trusting his whole weight to the prosthetic, and shoved.

And flew backward when the wall bent inward, freeing his prosthetic too quickly for him to react. He slammed against the floor and slid three body-lengths down the hall, and would have gone further if he hadn’t run head-first into Haxus’s legs. His lieutenant glowered down at him.

“Where were you?” he snapped, sounding stressed.

“Stuck at the entrance,” Sendak replied. He raised the prosthetic for emphasis, then rolled back to his feet. Haxus shot him an exasperated look, like Sendak was an untrained cub he had to watch. A trio of damaged sentries lurched out of the darkness behind him, and Sendak felt his ruff rising at their surprise appearance. “I’m going to check my quarters.”

“For your arm?” Haxus asked. Sendak nodded.

His quarters were scorched black along the wall closer to the hull. The bedding on his bunk was burned to cinders, which didn’t bode well for the fabric case his toolkit had been stored in. Sendak crouched beside the bunk and peered beneath. The narrow space was so black with soot that his eye’s aperture ratcheted open another notch to allow in even more light, and he reached in to feel for the pieces he couldn’t see. He found the arm first, scorched black and coated with a fine layer of soot, and blew on the ports at the upper end, the ones that linked the prosthetic to his nervous system. Soot blew back in his face. He reached back under, fumbling for the replacement pieces and tools he would need to repair any damage done to the prosthetic. Most of them were present, but the replacement port was gone, as were some of the smaller, more fiddly tools. Sendak’s fingers ran across a gap in the floor panels that hadn’t been there before and he knew instantly where they’d gone.

“Frex,” he muttered, scrabbling at the gap. His claws went in, curling around the bottom edge of the gap into the open space beneath. Well, that was it, then. Those tools and the port were gone.

“Is something wrong?” Haxus asked from the doorway.

“Some of my replacement parts and tools are missing. I’ll have to do without.” Sendak hefted the prosthetic. “Let’s go. We should get back to the pod before daybreak.”

Haxus raised a brow at him, ears tilting to match its arc. “Are you sure you can get back out again, Commander?”

Sendak cuffed him over the head as he brushed past. “Rude.”

“Thank you,” Haxus said smugly.

Sendak wheeled around to mock-glower at him, still moving up the hallway. “What would high command say if they knew how you disrespect your commander?”

“That you should be removed from your post if a few comments from an underling make you break down. 'Weakness is an infection,’ Sendak.”

Both of them laughed at that one. It was the second military mantra of the Galra Empire (the first being ‘Triumph or Death’), but by this point in their careers, they could mock it with ease. After all, who was going to call them out on perceived weaknesses when they were the only living Galra for light-cycles around, especially when the weaknesses in question were ‘letting your subordinate mouth off’ and ‘giving a shit about your crewmates’? Particularly when they had been one of the most successful pairs in the fleet since Sendak was promoted--he recalled at least one occasion when Prorok had pulled him aside at an officers’ meeting and mentioned something about wanting to know his secrets for his good relationship with those under his command.

Treat them like proper Galra instead of drones, maybe, Sendak had wanted to say. He’d made eye-contact with Thace across the room instead, tipping his ears sympathetically in reply to the lieutenant’s long-suffering look. Haxus had caught him afterwards and teasingly needled him for ‘cheating on him with another, fluffier lieutenant,’ which he’d denied vehemently. Though that, of course, had set off rumors of fraternization Sendak had been forced to quash before they got out of hand.

He eyed Haxus’s back as the smaller Galra slipped past him to retrieve the sentries and was glad those rumors hadn’t borne any sort of fruit, not even an investigation into any potential misconduct. Haxus was an old friend, the only person Sendak trusted unconditionally--though they were still relearning how they fit together, seventeen cycles after his promotion to commander. Sendak relied on him for all the things Haxus could do that he couldn’t, like work magic with technology or properly repair his arm when Sendak damaged it in a fight, or fit into small places for infiltration or any of the other small, miraculous skills Haxus seemed to pull out of nowhere.

The trek back to the pod was silent except for the sentries’ heavy steps. The night had dimmed a little--a quick glance up told Sendak that the moon had set while they’d scoured the wreck for parts. He could see Haxus’s brain going a million kliks per varga, ears tipping back and forth and brow alternately furrowing and smoothing out, probably working out what he could salvage from the damaged sentries to repair the more functional ones, what he could do to fix the pod with the parts they had. The little bastard was cute when he was thinking.

As they ducked back under the overhang where they’d hidden the pod, Haxus finally spoke. “I’m going to begin repairs on the sentries.”

“I’ll check the perimeter again,” Sendak said, relieved. He could get a little space for a few doboshes--

Haxus scowled and said, “You should rest. Your injuries won’t heal if you push yourself too hard--”

“And what if something has crossed our perimeter and seen the pod? We know next to nothing about this planet’s natives. If they’re sentient, how long do you think it will take them to make contact with Voltron? Not long, I bet, and that time will be halved if they’ve seen us. I’ll check the perimeter…” He hesitated a tick, weighing the pros and cons. “And then I’ll rest, so long as you take a look at my prosthetic. I would be more comfortable wearing that than this.” He shrugged his left shoulder, temporarily relieving the tension in the joint from the weight of the monstrosity.

Haxus studied him with narrow golden eyes, and Sendak had the feeling his lieutenant was wondering how easily he could be taken down and forced to rest. He came to a conclusion quickly enough. “Alright, but don’t push yourself and come immediately back if you find anything.”

Sendak didn’t reply verbally, but he tipped his ears in acknowledgement and gave Haxus his fondest look before heading off to set a new and check a new perimeter. 

Once he was around one of the canyon’s walls, he leaned against the cool rock and closed his eye. He was tired already. He’d been up the better part of a quintant on board the ship, and exertion, excitement, and injury hadn’t done much for his energy levels since. He considered hurrying through the perimeter check to get back to the pod and catch a nap, then weighed it against the prosthetic on his shoulder. Sleeping in prosthetics was always a bad idea, but this one had the potential to do him real injury and he didn’t need both shoulders out of commission. And if he slept, and Voltron showed up…

Haxus flashed across his mind’s eye, many cycles younger and crouched against a muddy forest floor, blood-streaked and wild-eyed, surrounded by the bodies of their former crewmates. No, sleep would be a bad idea. He couldn’t leave Haxus to handle the paladins alone. They’d tear him apart--Champion would tear him apart. That was not going to happen. Not when he’d already promised they would make it out. They just had to fix the pod. They had to fix communications. If they could call Central Command and get hold of High Commander Prorok, he could contact Subcommander Ilvek at Balmera X-95-Vox and have a ship dispatched to their location for extraction. And if Voltron’s new paladins were as untried as he thought, they would have enough trouble forming Voltron that an extraction could come get them and jump hyperdrive to get out before the Lions combined. Yes, that was it. Fix the comms, call in a rescue. He just...couldn’t sleep until then, that was all. He’d managed it before. He could do it again.

Sendak finished the perimeter check in a few doboshes--nothing of note at all, not even footprints in the sandy grit--and picked his way back to the pod. He slipped back beneath the overhang on the back side and walked around to the front.

Haxus had, apparently, done some housekeeping. Drifts and heaps of white dust from the inside of the pod settled all over the ground, scattered with more debris, cruiser shrapnel and damaged pod alike. Haxus himself was seated in the doorway of the pod, tinkering with parts from a disassembled sentry at his feet. He glanced up as Sendak approached, then returned his attention to his machinery.

“And how does our perimeter look, Commander?” There was the barest edge of mockery in Haxus’s voice.

“Clear,” Sendak replied. He stepped up into the door and sat down beside Haxus to peel off his boots. 

Haxus looked offended and reached up to shove playfully at Sendak’s left shoulder. “Keep those disgusting things away from me.”

“These?” Sendak asked, raising a boot. “Or these?” He shoved his foot in Haxus’s face to illustrate that one, and yelped when Haxus grabbed hold of the offending extremity and ran the pad of one finger down the sole. Haxus smirked and did it again. Sendak started to lunge for him and froze when his ribs protested, flaring with pain at the abrupt movement. Haxus let go of his foot immediately.

“Are you alright?” he asked. His ears tipped in concern, eyes narrowing slightly.

“I’m fine,” Sendak replied, scooting a little further into the pod and resting his back against one of the walls. 

Haxus was in front of him in an instant, undoing the clasps on his armor. The weighty chest piece fell free with a clank, and Sendak leaned forward to help with his leg armor. Haxus swatted his hand away, flattening his ears and glowering in a way that said ‘don’t even think about it, I will handle this’. He leaned back against the wall and shut his eye, letting the aperture of the cybernetic whir closed as well.

And then Haxus’s hands were on his left shoulder, the weight of them on the prosthetic. Sendak snapped his eyes open and grabbed one of Haxus’s wrists. “What do you think you’re doing?” he growled.

Haxus stared back firmly. “You can’t sleep in this, Sendak.” Oh, he’d dropped the teasing titles now. That was serious. “You will hurt yourself if you try.”

“You can’t take it off. Haxus, you know how long it takes to get this piece of garbage to work again. What if the paladins get to us while I’m resting, and we can’t get my arm working in time? You can’t possibly think to fight them all at once and survive.”

“They won’t. They’re day creatures, Sendak. Let your guard down for one tick, will you? The sentries will keep them off long enough, if they even show up.” Haxus kept one hand on the prosthetic, the hand Sendak had immobilized, and reached up with the other. His clawed fingertips caressed the back of one of Sendak’s ears, scratching gently over the base. Sendak resisted the urge to lean into the touch.

“I’ll only be napping, Haxus. When I do sleep, I’ll let you remove it, but until then…” he trailed off and shot Haxus an emphatic glare.

It took three ticks for Haxus to cave. “Alright.” He stroked Sendak’s ear again, base to tip. “I’ll see what I can do with your regular prosthetic while you rest.”

Sendak nodded a thank-you, his eyes sliding shut before he could stop them.

He spent the next couple of vargas wandering in and out of consciousness, vaguely aware of his surroundings but unable to move. His right shoulder throbbed. His left ached dully, phantom pain his cybernetics never did a damn thing for. His ribs hurt too, faint and distant pain that occasionally woke him when he slid too far down the wall and folded just wrong. He must have cried out at some point, because he wandered back to awareness with his head in Haxus’s lap and a cold pack draped over his injured shoulder, Haxus’s hands carding through his ruff and stroking his ears. Haxus was talking, too quietly to hear. He wandered back out of consciousness and came to alone, before sinking back under.

Sendak came back to full awareness as the sky outside began to lighten. His ribs still ached slightly, his right shoulder felt stiff and sore under the warming cold pack, and his head was fogged with bad sleep. The inside of his mouth felt dry and gritty. He sat up slowly and started a stretch. The brace stopped his arm mid-rotation, and the weight of his prosthetic dragged at his other shoulder, but his back popped a tick later and that made it worth it.

“Haxus?” he called, glancing around.

His cybernetic eye targeted a flicker of movement by the opening of the pod, and he whipped towards it. Haxus, his head jerking back up. Bleary gold eyes blinked at him.

“...Sendak?”

Sendak huffed, pushed himself to his feet. “Now who should be sleeping?” he said, tilting his ears to a rakish angle. He padded over and sat back down next to Haxus, leaning his right shoulder against the smaller Galra.

“I finished repairing the sentries,” Haxus said drowsily. His eyelids slid to half-mast. “Two of them are on perimeter duty, two are here...and the drone--” he yawned, jaw-crackingly-- “is working perfectly. I should...get to work on the pod…”

“You should get to work on some sleep,” Sendak said. When Haxus didn’t move, he added, “That was an order. Turn in for a couple vargas and work on the pod when you’re not exhausted.”

“Yes, sir,” Haxus replied, and immediately flopped over onto his back. 

The sound of his breathing evened out a few ticks later, and Sendak stood quietly and moved out for another perimeter check. Haxus putting the sentries on guard duty didn’t mean Sendak would stop patrolling. He’d seen what Champion had done to the sentries on the ship. These ones, no matter how well Haxus had repaired them, would go down just as easily.


	2. Tumble

Haxus woke at the first loud boom. The floor of the pod shuddered with the force of the explosion, the hatches in the walls rattling in place. He sat bolt upright, squinting at the light coming through the open doors. Even in the shade of the overhang it was nearly too bright for him. Sendak was gone. There was another pod-rattling explosion, and he scrambled out of the pod, eyes slitted against the light.

The sentries were lined up against the back of the overhang, faceplates dim--shut down to preserve energy or conceal them. The ones he’d used for salvage were heaped beside them like broken puppets. And, silhouetted against the mouth of the overhang, was Sendak. The commander was crouched as close to the ground as possible, ears alert and twitching at every sound.

“What’s going on?” Haxus asked quietly, crouching next to him. “Is it Voltron?”

Sendak’s left ear twitched towards him. “I don’t know. The Lions were flying formations earlier, but this is...something else.” Well, that explained why the sentries were under cover. “Shall we investigate?”

“It could be a trap to lure us out. You know Champion does that--you saw him in the arena.” Well, only once, but it had certainly made a lasting impression. A thought struck him. “Could it be one of our ships in a firefight with Voltron?”

“No. I would have seen or heard them enter the atmosphere, and the skies have been quiet aside from Voltron.”

“Then maybe it is Voltron,” Haxus said. The explosions certainly sounded like they were coming from the general direction of Voltron’s base.

“Maybe,” Sendak replied. His ears twitched. Haxus knew that look.

“Oh no. Do not go out there and investigate.”

“Don’t you want to know what’s going on?”

“Not enough to be captured and killed for it. Commander. Sendak. You’ll never be able to hide from them in this terrain. Don’t even think about it.”

Sendak lowered his ears. “Alright,” he muttered irritably, and slunk away from the mouth of the overhang.

Haxus hurried after him. “So what did you do while I was asleep?”

“Reconnaissance of the area. There’s a settlement of the locals not far from the canyons. They appear sentient but not far advanced, and are…” he held his hands apart, roughly the equivalent of the distance between the ground and his knee, “tiny. And soft-looking. They don’t seem to venture much in this direction, so we should be out of sight here. A little deeper down this canyon, there is a natural spring and indigenous plants.”

“You didn’t eat anything, did you?” Haxus asked.

“Of course not,” Sendak huffed, looking offended. “I did drink the water, though.” He cut off Haxus’s impending screech of ‘what do you think you’re doing, that could have killed you’ with an “It’s alright. If it were going to harm me, I would be experiencing the effects already.”

“There was water in the ration packs,” Haxus said dryly.

Sendak pulled a face. “No. It always tastes like the pouch.”

“It’s sterile and safe for Galra consumption.”

“And old and disgusting. Why would I inflict that on myself when there was fresh water right there?”

“Because you don’t want to die from some hostile organism in the ‘fresh’ water?” When Sendak didn’t respond, Haxus buried his face in his hands and groaned. “Sometimes I think your stupidity will get you killed faster than combat.”

“I’m not stupid, Haxus.”

“Yet you do things like drink potentially-contaminated water on an alien planet.”

“I was thirsty, it was there, and now we know that it isn’t contaminated and won’t hurt us.”

“You could have taken the scanner with you and checked properly instead of endangering yourself.”

“Haxus, the scanner is designed to be used with the left hand.”

“...Oh.” Outside, the sounds of explosions stopped abruptly, making the pause that followed much more awkward than it otherwise would have been.

“Speaking of left hands, did you look over my prosthetic after you finished with the sentries?” Sendak asked, breaking the silence.

Haxus sighed. “I did. There’s some good news, and some bad news.”

“Tell me.”

“The main body of the prosthetic was mostly functional and the damaged parts were an easy fix. Unfortunately, the connector ports were damaged by the explosion, and I couldn’t find your spare in the pieces you salvaged.”

Sendak groaned. “That was the one replacement part I couldn’t find.”

Haxus frowned thoughtfully. “We have options, at least. I could attempt to duplicate the part with scraps from the sentries, though I don’t know how well it would hold up. I could try to repair the damaged port with scraps from the sentries, but the corollary from the first still stands.”

“Or you could take the port from this one--” Sendak shrugged his left shoulder-- “to replace the part in the other one.”

“We should save that as a last resort,” Haxus replied. “I don’t know if the two ports are the same, and if they aren’t and I’ve removed the port from that one, then you have two non-functional prosthetics and no arm rather than one non-functional prosthetic and an arm you hate.”

“Fine.” Lords of the Astral, did Sendak look miffed about that. Ears down, lip curled, heavy brows furrowed. Haxus immediately noted the way his cybernetic eye pushed at the line of his brow. Did it ever bother him? Haxus would love to get his hands on it, to take it apart and see how it worked, but then Sendak would be down an eye again and have to adjust, and he couldn’t think of a single time in the last three cycles when things had been quiet enough to afford that.

Haxus reached up and grabbed at the tip of Sendak’s ear, tugging gently. “I’ll get started on repairing the port immediately.”

“Maybe you should work on comms and navigation first,” Sendak replied, grabbing Haxus’s wrist and detaching him. “We should get in touch with Central Command and let them know we’re alive.” 

“You think they’ll send an extraction?”

“They have to. We’re valuable members of the empire. If I can get to Prorok, I can talk him into sending Ilvek and his fleet over. I’ll even allow them the glory of capturing Voltron if it means getting out of here.”

Haxus shrugged and climbed back into the pod. He pulled up a diagnostic on the communications system. “The transmitter was damaged during the crash. I’m going up to work on it.”

“Need a boost?”

“Please.” 

That, actually, was the only thing the enormous prosthetic was good for. It was big enough for Haxus to sit in if he needed a lift to somewhere higher than he could reach that he couldn’t climb to. He grabbed the spare parts and tools for the transmitter and exited the pod, walking around to the back, the side closest to the transmitter hatch. Sendak followed, stopping beside him and spreading the gigantic, curled claws on the prosthetic. Haxus swung himself up into the palm, setting the toolkit down on his lap.

“Initializing gateway with limb,” Haxus said, grinning.

“The limb is go,” Sendak replied, winked, and hoisted him into the air. 

Haxus scrambled onto the roof as soon as he could--he knew Sendak could only hold him up for so long, and he didn’t feel like pushing it. He flipped open the transmitter hatch and studied the contents. The transmitter itself looked fine, but the wires around it were a twisted mess, protective coating half-melted and clumping. Groaning, he pried the whole mess from its place and set it atop the pod, being careful not to twist the cables that connected the transmitter to the control panel inside.

“How does it look?” Sendak called up.

“Messy but fixable,” Haxus replied. “When I tell you, can you go back inside and test the communications system?”

“I can,” Sendak said. 

The bigger Galra moved mostly out of sight, slouching against the side of the pod. Haxus returned his attention to the transmitter, beginning to disentangle the wires and inspect them for structural integrity, detaching and setting aside the damaged ones and replacing them with new wire from the toolkit. Once the wiring was fixed, Haxus opened the transmitter’s casing.

And swore quietly under his breath. “...This may take longer than I anticipated,” he said, leaning over the side of the pod. Sendak looked up at him.

“What’s the matter?”

“The transmitter is fried. It must have overheated during our free-fall. I don’t know how much of it is salvageable.”

Sendak groaned, and a tick later Haxus heard a thunk, presumably from the commander smacking his head on the pod in frustration. “Do you have an estimate on how long it will take you to find all the damaged parts?”

“Another varga or so, at the absolute minimum.”

“Alright. I’m going to check the perimeter.”

“You know, I’m beginning to think this is becoming one of your compulsions.”

“I don’t like the idea of something sneaking up on us, and unlike the sentries I can conceal myself if I encounter anyone. Keep working on the transmitter. I’ll be back soon.”

And then he was gone. Bastard.

“One of these days, that’s going to get you killed,” Haxus muttered. 

He disassembled the transmitter carefully, one piece at a time, going over each with a careful eye and separating out anything that looked damaged, just to be safe. Some of the damages were minor enough that he could repair them easily. Others, like the main control chip, would need replaced entirely. Haxus was grateful that whoever packed the toolkits had thought to provide a replacement chip. He reminded himself to request replacement parts for the life support systems in the pods when they got back to the main fleet. No way was he ever going to be caught out unprepared like this again.

Pebbles skittered across the floor of the overhang, and Sendak hurtled after them a tick later. He came to a thunderous stop right in front of the back wall and leaned against it, breathing heavily. Haxus swung himself off the roof of the pod immediately, landing on the balls of his feet and allowing his momentum to carry him down into a crouch to disperse the energy of his fall.

“Sendak? Are you alright?” Haxus asked.

Sendak took a couple more ragged gulps of air before panting, “Voltron Lions. Over the canyons. They might be headed this way.”

“Did they see you?”

“I don’t know. They were flying this general direction when I spotted them. I think I was out of sight, but…” He pressed his face against the wall of the cave, still gasping.

“But you don’t know how much you stood out to their eyes.” Hadn’t there been a report that Champion saw almost half again the range of colors Galra did? His profile had mentioned a third color cone and a distinct lack of a tapetum lucidum.

“Precisely. We’ll stay in here and keep low, and hope they haven’t seen us.”

“And if they have?”

“The Lions won’t fit under here. The paladins will have to engage us on foot.”

“...We have me and four damaged sentries.”

“And me.”

“You’re injured. I don’t think fighting with that arm would be in your best interest.”

“If they come in here, I will fight. Triumph or death.”

A dull boom sounded somewhere not far off. Dust and small rocks fell from the walls and ceiling. A second boom followed on its heels less than a tick later. Sendak pushed off the wall and hurried towards Haxus. Then, from somewhere almost directly above them, came the sound of rock being smashed to pieces. Sendak hit Haxus like a meteor, slamming the smaller Galra to the ground and arching protectively over him as chunks of stone rained from the ceiling. A much, much larger rock smashed to the ground just outside the entrance. A blast of hot, dry air rushed into the space. Through the cage of Sendak’s limbs, Haxus caught a glimpse of something huge and dark rushing by outside. The Black Lion. It had to be.

And then it was gone and everything was quiet except the sound of their breathing. His face was close enough to Sendak’s that, if he’d wanted, Haxus could have leaned up and pressed their brows together. Sendak’s eye was squeezed shut, his ears flat against his skull. His breath stirred the fine hairs on Haxus’s ear. His right arm was shaking. Haxus pushed himself most of the way out from beneath Sendak, grabbing the commander’s shoulder. Sendak opened his eye and peered up at him, then shifted into a more seated position to take the weight off his arms.

“Are you alright?” Sendak rasped.

“Yes,” Haxus replied. “Are they--”

“Gone, I think. I don’t hear them anymore.” He was shaking, Haxus noticed. Sendak’s whole frame quivered.

“Sendak, are you alright?” he asked.

“I’m fine.” Sendak was definitely shaking. Haxus grabbed his right wrist, lifted his hand off the ground and pressed the palm-pad against his cheek. The rough skin was warm, but not feverishly so. Haxus released him and stood, then reached down to pull Sendak to his feet. Sendak rose with little prompting. He was close, too close, organic eye heavy-lidded and ears lowered, almost enough to make him endearing despite his scar. Their breastplates bumped against one another. Haxus went rigid.

And then Sendak stepped back and coughed lightly, and the moment shattered.

“I should...get back to work...on the transmitter,” Haxus said awkwardly. He hesitated, then added, “And maybe you should ice your shoulder.”

“...I think you’re right,” Sendak said, just as awkward, and hurried into the pod. Haxus climbed back up top himself--much easier since he didn’t have to drag the toolkit up with him--and sat staring at the disassembled transmitter for a few doboshes.

He couldn’t honestly say he hadn’t considered it. Sendak was an appealing Galra, tall and strong despite not being whole, but he was also Haxus’s commanding officer, and fraternization between ranks was strictly forbidden by protocol. If they were of equal rank, no one would have cared--no one had cared back when they’d been foot soldiers, intimate relationships with crewmates weren’t at all uncommon--but it was common knowledge that commanders in relationships with a soldier under their command tended to grant favors, and that was unacceptable. And at any rate, he still wasn't entirely sure where they stood, not after Sekir. Sendak was...well, he hated to even think it, but Sendak was still fragile after all this time, and sometimes he wondered if they would ever--

“That transmitter won’t fix itself while you sit here and dither, Haxus,” he mumbled to himself, and dove back into the process of replacing the damaged pieces and fitting them back together. It was soothing, almost, immersing himself in the fine details of restoring the transmitter. The parts fit together perfectly, unlike most things in the universe. All he had to do was find the right way to attach them, and they made a complete, perfect whole.

Well, not entirely perfect. The replacement parts were a slightly different shade of chrome, brighter from lack of use against the duller original pieces, and their fit was slightly different from the now-broken parts they replaced. But it looked like it would work. He settled the machine back into its casing and put the case and attached wires back into the hull.

“Sendak?” he yelled down. “The transmitter should work now.”

“Powering up the interface,” Sendak called from inside the pod. 

A tick passed. Two. Haxus’s innards clenched tight with dread. If it wasn’t working…

“Transmitter is operational. Navigation is back online. Searching for a satellite to connect with the Intergalactic Communications Network now.”

Haxus sighed with relief and shut the hatch. “I’m on my way down.”  
********************************************************************************************************  
Sendak and Haxus laid low the whole afternoon--the light outside was too bright for either of them, the heat too intense. Even beneath the overhang, it reached the point where the pair had to strip out of their armor and undersuits to keep from overheating. Sendak rarely envied his lieutenant’s thinner coat, but he reconsidered his stance when mid-afternoon found him spread-eagle on the floor of the pod, completely nude, while Haxus fixed the thermoregulators. If it had been less abysmally hot he would have been tempted to take a nap, but the air caught in the back of his throat like shed fur, and the close brush with Voltron had left a nagging sense that the Lions could swoop in and find them at any moment. The Black Lion had come close enough that he could have reached out and touched it, had he been standing in the mouth of the cave. It was nerve-wracking.

Haxus fumbled a tool by the hatch in the wall containing the thermoregulator’s control settings. Sendak’s ears twitched towards him, catching the clatter of metal and a bitten-off curse. The heat was getting even Haxus down, it seemed, and he had a much higher tolerance for it than Sendak. After all, his undersuit was stripped only to the waist, and he wasn’t panting to try and disperse his body heat yet.

There was another muffled curse, a thunk, and then the thermoregulator hummed to life. “There we go,” Haxus muttered.

A blast of cold air hit Sendak directly in the face. He all but moaned with relief, shifting to find the center of the vent’s outflow and cool as much of himself as he could manage. Haxus chuffed, and Sendak didn’t even need to look at him to know he was being laughed at.

“Shut up,” he grumbled, rolling over to expose his back to the vent. Haxus sat down next to him a tick later, not blocking the airflow, and began disentangling the knots in his fur behind his right shoulder. Sendak went limp, a purr rumbling in the back of his throat, and Haxus chuffed again.

“Imagine if the other commanders saw you like this,” Haxus said, amusement coloring his tone.

“Prorok would proposition me on the spot,” Sendak said.

“Filthy,” Haxus retorted. “I was picturing Throk’s reaction.”

“Throk would laugh. I doubt the heat would even faze him.” He paused, thoughtful. “Where’s he from, again?”

“Ba-Tet, if I recall correctly.”

“He wouldn’t have noticed the heat, then.” They fell quiet for a few ticks. Then Sendak said, “Three places you’d rather be than here?”

“On our cruiser, taking Voltron back to Central Command,” Haxus said. “Visiting home on leave. And…” he hummed thoughtfully. “...Somewhere comfortable, with a bed. You?”

“At this point, I might take Sekir over Arus. It was at least cooler there.”

“I didn’t think you might want to go back to the place that cost you your arm.”

“You’d be surprised.” Haxus had stopped grooming and was kneading Sendak’s upper back like he planned to take a nap on it, claws just barely digging into his skin.

“You’re tense,” he said.

Sendak hummed distractedly. “Haven’t stretched properly since before the crash.”

“And that’s how long you’ve had that prosthetic on, isn’t it?”

Sendak nodded into the floor. Then he froze, realizing what he’d just admitted. “Haxus, no. You can’t take that off. If Voltron--”

“Voltron is not coming--”

“They were here less than three vargas ago, Haxus, and they missed us by a very small margin. They could return at any moment--”

“Ah, yes, and you’re going to fend them off unclothed.”

“Their species has a nudity taboo, remember? The surprise should stop them long enough to give me an advantage.”

Haxus sighed. “You’ll need to take it off soon, Sendak, or you’ll risk losing the remnant limb.”

“I know. I’ll do it when it’s safe.” He could feel Haxus glaring a hole in his back.

“If you go to sleep here on the floor, I’m going to remove it whether you like it or not.”

Sendak pushed himself upright immediately, popping his back as he did, and looked over his shoulder at Haxus. The smaller Galra flattened his ears and shot Sendak the dirtiest look in his repertoire.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Hax--”

“Don’t injure yourself because you’re paranoid, Commander.”

Sendak’s ears lowered immediately, confused by the sudden distance stressing his rank brought on. Haxus was glaring, his ears flattened to his skull and his whole body tense, and somehow the look radiated worry instead of anger. Sendak was rarely cowed by anything--Zarkon had been forced to beat him into submission several times during his time under the emperor--but the look on Haxus’s face made him want to roll over and submit, to just give in and let Haxus--no. No way. Haxus was his subordinate, not his commander, and Sendak didn’t cave to just anything. Certainly not to his lieutenant. Even with exhaustion dragging at his limbs and dull aches over much of his body, he could overpower Haxus like he was nothing. He was in charge, and he wasn’t about to give in and let Haxus handle things.  
********************************************************************************************************

They didn’t leave the shelter of the overhang until well after nightfall. It was too hot until shortly before sunset, and then Voltron made another pass over the canyons, in combined form this time, keeping them under cover for another couple vargas. Haxus had kept himself busy with repairing the air recycling system and replacing the warped filters. Sendak did...something, Haxus wasn’t sure what, but it kept him busy and out of the pod, which was a good thing. If they spent any more time in the same space, Haxus was either going to murder him or pin him to the ground and have it out with him, and at this point in time they could afford neither.

He’d been tinkering with one of the chemical filters for half a varga and was coated to the elbows with grease and other unmentionable gunk when Sendak poked his head back into the pod and said, “I’m going to the spring if you’d care to join me.”

Haxus slid out of the open panel, carefully avoiding smacking his head on it on the way out. “What for?”

“To get out of this cave,” Sendak replied, flicking his ear.

Well, that made sense. None of Sendak’s abilities were of any use in their current situation, and he had to be overflowing with restless energy.

“Give me a tick, and I’ll come along,” Haxus said. He grabbed his grease rag and almost ran it over his forearms to get the worst of the gunk off, but hesitated. The piece of cloth was nearly as gross as he was, and wiping off on that wouldn’t do him any favors. He dropped it back on the floor and headed out.

Sendak was waiting by the mouth of the cave, staring out into the night. His ears tipped towards Haxus. “Ready?”

“Yes,” Haxus replied.

It was a relatively short trek, maybe half a klik. The spring was down a side-canyon, a narrow cleft in the rock just wide enough to accommodate Sendak’s broad shoulders and bulky prosthetic. They had to walk single-file, and Haxus stared at Sendak’s back and wondered just how much ‘reconnaissance’ the commander had done. Haxus would have overlooked this crack in the rock in favor of scoping out the wider canyons, or only explored it after he’d mapped out every possible large canyon that led to their hideout.

And then suddenly they were descending from bare rock into a sea of plants, and Haxus’s ears caught the sound of running water. Sendak pulled aside a broad-leafed plant, revealing a broad waterway emerging from a cleft in the rocks. Trees arched overhead, dappling moonlight over moss-covered rocks and fine-bladed plants on the ground. Haxus slipped past him and padded to the water’s edge.

“Go ahead,” Sendak said behind him. “I’ll keep watch.”

Haxus glanced over his shoulder and eyed him suspiciously. “You’re being awfully nice,” he said, stripping out of his undersuit.

“If we’re getting out of here, we can’t fight with each other.”

“So you’re trying to placate me with the opportunity for a swim.”

“It isn’t trying if it works.”

Well, that was a fair assessment, and it was working. Few Galra learned to swim unless they were born on wetter planets, and Haxus had never actually dropped the habit after joining the military. Not that he got to do it often, so, now that he was thinking about it, manipulating him with an opportunity worked better than anything else Sendak could have bribed him with. He finished peeling off the undersuit, tossed it over the rocks, and waded in. The water was cold, shocking him back to full awareness as it crept higher up his body. The center of the stream, the deepest point, came only to his waist. Haxus took a deep breath and submerged.

And immediately resurfaced, gasping. The water was much colder than he’d expected. Sendak laughed, and Haxus splashed in his general direction without opening his eyes, wiping the lids clear of water with the back of his hand. A yelp from shore confirmed he’d hit his mark.

“What the quiznak, Haxus?” Sendak demanded. Haxus turned to look at him and snickered. He’d managed to get Sendak right in the face. Water dripped from his flattened ears and rolled down the finer fur on his brows and nose.

“Sorry, Sen,” Haxus said, still snickering.

“Lies,” Sendak groused, shaking his head. He raked his claws through his ruff, shaking water droplets away and scowling.

Haxus did feel a little guilty--if he’d splashed anywhere else, Sendak's thick double-coat would have retained the water instead of shedding it and caused them both problems, not the least of which being Sendak's fur growing mold when it failed to dry. He’d seen it happen before--not to Sendak, who was fastidious about keeping dry, but to other soldiers with similar coats--and it usually led to everyone in the barracks getting sick. They couldn’t afford something like that happening here. Haxus sank back down until only his head was exposed and raked his claws through the fur on his forearms, sending plumes of oil and gunk swirling away downstream. That was better. Well, probably not better for whatever was downstream, but better for him, and that was what counted.

He spent half of the next varga in the water, then clambered out onto the rocks next to Sendak. The rocks were still warm from the sun, a pleasant contrast with the chill of the water. He closed his eyes a tick and tilted his head back, enjoying the night air on his face. Despite the circumstances, being planetside was almost nice. The air lacked the bitter, metallic tang of repeated recycling, and natural gravity was always...interesting, compared to the standardized tug of the ship’s artificial gravity. Arus’s gravity was lighter than the cruiser’s had been, but not by much. His fur was drying in short, soft spikes--he’d need to groom himself later to get it to lay flat again. He could do that back at the pod, though. Being away from it this long was beginning to make Haxus nervous that something had gotten in. He almost kicked himself at that. Sendak’s Voltron-induced paranoia had to be rubbing off.

“Are you ready to head back?” Haxus asked. 

Sendak hummed in response, a quiet rumble of assent, and stood slowly. Haxus stood as well and eyed Sendak, trying to be unobtrusive. His ears were lowered, face tensed in solid impassivity and betraying nothing. The rest of his body was just as controlled, muscles wound tight as coiled springs, his steps careful and precise. That last part might have just been because of the rough terrain, but Haxus had a feeling that wasn’t it. A flicker of memory tugged at his mind, the particular cadence of Sendak’s steps calling up an image of the last day of the Sekir campaign, of mud-splattered uniforms and faces bright and hard with triumph and Sendak collapsing as he stepped onto the cruiser’s boarding ramp. Haxus shook his head to clear it. This wasn’t Sekir, and Sendak was fine.

That is, right up until they hit the slight slope at the entrance to the overhang. Sendak’s boots skidded on a patch of loose gravel, and instead of catching himself, the commander went down hard and stayed down, stifling a low groan. Haxus crouched next to him, grabbing at the back of Sendak’s armor to help pull him to his feet. Sendak leaned against him for a tick or two, breathing harshly, and straightened.

“Are you alright?” Haxus asked.

“...I’m alright,” Sendak replied. He clearly wasn’t, though, and he proved it when he went to take another step and buckled immediately. Haxus had kept his grip on Sendak’s armor, fortunately. He lowered the commander back to the ground and knelt beside him. Sendak tipped his head back and met Haxus’s gaze. His eyelid drooped with obvious exhaustion, the rim reddened from exposure. Haxus ran a hand over one lowered ear.

“You should sleep,” he said quietly.

“I can’t--”

“No.” Haxus cut him off. “You’ve slept maybe two vargas in the last two quintants, you’ve pushed yourself to exhaustion. I know you kept yourself awake to fight off Voltron if they come for us, but right now I doubt you could fight a cub, much less a paladin.”

He could pinpoint the exact moment Sendak caved in. His shoulders slumped, ears lowering further in submission, eye fluttering closed. He leaned his head against Haxus’s hand. “...Alright. Haxus, you...I can’t stand. I…”

“I’ll help you,” Haxus replied, sliding his arm under Sendak’s shoulders and pushing them both upright. He stumbled a little under their combined weight, and then Sendak got his feet under him and helped support them back to the pod.

They crumpled almost immediately as Sendak’s knees gave out, spilling across the floor. Haxus rolled back upright immediately. Sendak stayed down, face pressed uncomfortably against the floor. Haxus flipped him over and set to work stripping him of his armor. The prosthetic was next. He cautiously deactivated it and shoved the forearm piece off to the side, then fiddled with the hatches on the shoulder piece. It came away in two parts, just like it should have, the connectors hissing as they detached from the port in Sendak’s stump. The remnant limb was swollen and warm to the touch, but that wasn’t at all unusual even after shorter periods of time, and the area around the ports showed no sign of infection, so Haxus wasn’t overly worried. He prodded Sendak back to alertness.

“Do you have a compression sleeve with you?”

Sendak nodded. “Inside pocket of my breastplate.”

Haxus pulled the smooth, stretchy piece of black fabric and held it up, amused. “So that’s where this one went.”

“I knew where it was,” Sendak mumbled, shifting so Haxus could pull the sleeve up over his stump and settle the band in place. His face tightened ever so slightly with distress, and Haxus sighed.

“I’m giving you something for the pain,” Haxus said, standing. Sendak made a soft sound of protest. “No. You didn’t rest last time because you were hurting, so this time you’re taking something so you’ll sleep.”

“Hax…”

“Don’t fight with me.” 

There were pills in the first aid kit, and as much as Haxus doubted Sendak could manage oral medication, he didn’t want to use the stronger stuff in the three-pack of sterile syringes at the bottom of the kit just yet, not when he’d seen it put soldiers Sendak’s size down for a quintant. He grabbed the pill bottle and a water pouch from the rations and knelt beside Sendak, propping his head up. Sendak submitted to his ministrations, which was both worrying and oddly endearing. A soft sigh passed the commander’s lips. Then he was out.

Haxus sat still for several doboshes, Sendak’s head cradled in his lap, just listening. Wind whispered outside the pod. Inside, the thermoregulators cycled with a hum and clicked back off. That, and Sendak’s breathing, and his own heartbeat, were the only sounds. The world was quiet.

Then Haxus stood, resettling Sendak on the floor of the pod, and headed out to reactivate the sentries. If the commander was going to be out for the next several vargas, Haxus wanted what little extra protection the sentries would provide. He knew he wasn’t a fighter, not like most soldiers of his rank--Haxus stood where he did not from his own physical prowess but from his connections to Sendak, and he would never forget that. In the military, strength equalled authority and technology would only get you so far, but he had an ally. He and Sendak had always covered each other’s weaknesses. They were a pair. But with half the pair out of commission, Haxus had to compensate some other way.

He reactivated the four functional sentries and set them to keep watch by the mouth of the overhang. Then he took Sendak’s usual prosthetic and the remnants of the damaged sentries and got to work, detaching the burnt-out wires from the port and looking through the parts for similarly-sized wires. There weren’t any, though, just like last time, and he was worried about using larger wires or paring them down to fit--if the shoulder port got damaged, neither prosthetic would connect, and that would put them at a serious disadvantage.

Light flashed in the corner of his eye, and Haxus turned towards the control panel. There was a notification up--the comms had finally located a satellite to connect with the ICN. He set the arm aside and went to the controls, opening the communications dialogue and set up a connection to Central Command. The screen stayed blank for an unnervingly long time, long enough that Haxus was afraid the call hadn’t gone through after all. And then the feed opened on the familiar striped face of Commander Throk, who looked simultaneously startled and delighted.

“Why, if it isn’t Lieutenant Haxus. I heard your cruiser went down on Arus,” he said.

“Commander Throk,” Haxus said, saluting.

“And whatever happened to Commander Sendak?” Throk’s brows lowered, his huge ears tilting forwards. “Surely he didn’t go...down with the ship?”

“He’s alive,” Haxus replied. “We’re alright, but the cruiser is destroyed and the pod we used for escape isn’t space-worthy. We need an extraction.”

“Hold on a tick and I’ll put you through to Prorok. That’s his jurisdiction.”

“Thank you--” Haxus started. Throk winked at him, and then the screen switched over to High Commander Prorok. Haxus immediately snapped off a salute.

“Lieutenant Haxus,” Prorok said, scowling at the screen. He looked rumpled and irritated, like he’d been woken up to take the call. “So you survived. Where is Commander Sendak?”

“Asleep,” Haxus replied. “I would have preferred to contact you while he was awake, but we just got the communications system back online, and I was under orders to contact Central Command as soon as possible.”

Prorok harrumphed. “And what was the purpose of this call?”

“We’re requesting an extraction,” Haxus said. “Our cruiser was destroyed, our escape pod is no longer space-worthy, and Commander Sendak is injured. We cannot complete our mission. Commander Sendak suggested that I ask you to have Subcommander Ilvek send a stealth cruiser to retrieve us without alerting Voltron to our continued presence.”

“You’ll have to wait for tomorrow for an answer,” Prorok said. “Under ordinary circumstances, the moment you called I would have sent word to Ilvek to retrieve you, but you two were assigned this mission by Emperor Zarkon himself so your extraction will require his permission. The Emperor will not have time to grant that permission for another ten vargas. Can you hold out that long?”

“Yes, sir,” Haxus said.

“Good. I will do my utmost to get you two off Arus. Until then, stay safe.”

“Vrepit sa, Commander,” Haxus said, saluting.

“Vrepit sa,” Prorok replied. The screen went dark.

Haxus sighed and leaned against the control panel, burying his face in his hands. Tomorrow. And then if the extraction went through, another ten vargas for Ilvek’s team to receive their orders, prepare for the mission, and get to Arus and pick them up. That was a full quintant, at the earliest, until help arrived. Another day stuck on Arus, and no way to know if they would make it off safely.

A thought struck him like a punch to the gut. What if the paladins knew they were around and hadn’t attacked because they were planning to use him and Sendak as bait? What if the extraction team that came for them was playing directly into Voltron’s hands, to be killed or captured and interrogated for information? It would be just like Champion to play things that way. Haxus had seen his arena fights. Champion was clever, fast-thinking, and utterly ruthless. He employed devastating strategies against much larger, stronger opponents, coming out on top against impossible odds. If he was using those same strategies in Voltron against the Empire, it might take more than anyone expected to bring the paladins down.

Pain spiked at his temple, and Haxus pulled his hands away from his head. He’d cut through the thin skin with his claws, apparently. It wasn’t bleeding yet, though, and Haxus had to resist the urge to prod at the cuts. He sighed, lowered his hands, and turned around, leaning the small of his back against the control panel and staring across the pod at the open doors. He was tired. The swim and ensuing stress had left him as drained of energy as a planet visited by the druids. Well, if he had the sentries on guard duty anyway…

Haxus stripped out of his armor and lay down at Sendak’s left side, tucking himself against the commander’s bulk. Sendak stirred, and for a tick Haxus was afraid he was going to wake up, but he just rolled so his back was pressed against Haxus’s front. Haxus settled his face between Sendak’s shoulders, shut his eyes, and dozed off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Wow. That got more interest than I expected. Hi, folks! Thanks for the kudos!  
>  If you're interested in extra content (art for now, meta and worldbuilding if I can find the time), drop on over to my Tumblr, https://shadow-djinni.tumblr.com/  
> See you all next Sunday!


	3. Descent

Sendak woke when the first rays of sunlight made their way through the doors of the pod and struck his face. He was curled up on his side on the floor--when had he gotten there? He couldn’t remember. The previous night was a blur in his mind, disconnected jolts of memory without continuity. His head was much clearer now, though, and the ache behind his eyes was gone.

Of course, that said nothing about the aches in other parts of his body, and when he went to sit upright, his chest, back, and shoulders throbbed intently, sending him right back down with a groan. He tried a second time, going to prop himself on his elbows, and crashed back to the floor when nothing connected on the left side.

“Haxus?” he called, trying--and failing--a third time. No response. “Haxus?”

Haxus poked his head around the door of the pod. “You’re awake,” he said, looking pleased.

“How long was I out?” Sendak asked, craning his neck to look around. Haxus was at his side in an instant, helping to prop him up. Sendak winced at the pull on his shoulders.

“The whole night,” Haxus replied. “I got a call out to Central Command. Prorok says he needs permission from Emperor Zarkon to send an extraction.”

Sendak groaned. “Void take it. How long do we have to wait?”

“We should expect another call in about three vargas.” Haxus patted Sendak’s shoulder. “How are you holding up?” His tone said, ‘don’t lie’.

“Sore, and a bit stiff. My shoulders ache.”

Haxus sighed. “You wouldn’t hurt this badly if you let yourself rest for once in your life,” he said, grinding the heels of his hands against Sendak’s back, just below his shoulder blades.

Sendak tipped his head back, trying to get a look at his lieutenant’s face. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

“What for?” Haxus asked.

“I’ve been largely useless since the crash. You shouldn’t have to pull my deadweight.”

“You are not deadweight.”

“I am deadweight. Weakness is an infection. Cut it off before it spreads. You should have abandoned me.”

“Why? You aren’t weak. You were injured, and you pushed yourself to protect me when you should have been healing. That is not weakness.”

“I couldn’t even stand last night.”

“You were injured and had been up for over fifty vargas. I’m surprised you didn’t collapse sooner. Sendak, you know most others would have been incapacitated by the dislocated arm alone, much less kept their heads and done what had to be done while coping with it.”

Sendak hummed. “Hax...do you think Emperor Zarkon will grant permission for an extraction? I failed him when I let Voltron get away. I lost the Red Lion. He may not want us back.”

“He will want you back,” Haxus said. “You did your best, and you’re one of his strongest commanders.”

“I made so many mistakes. I believed those two were surrendering, I let them get away with the Red Lion, I failed to retrieve them…”

“There was no reason not to think the paladins were surrendering, or to think they would be able to steal the Lion or form Voltron.”

“I wasn’t careful enough during our landing.”

Haxus huffed, amused. “I’ll grant you that one. I did warn you to brace for impact.”

“I--”

“Do you really want to analyse everything that’s happened since we were ordered to retrieve Voltron?”

Sendak lowered his ears in embarrassment. “No,” he said.

“Then stop,” Haxus said.

Sendak shut his mouth and let Haxus work the soreness from his muscles. Haxus stayed quiet, too, occasionally humming snippets of song or pausing to rest his face against Sendak’s shoulder and run his claws through his fur when he hit a particularly sore spot and Sendak tried to pull away. Well, if Haxus was going to be this gentle with him, Sendak was going to milk it for everything he could get. He leaned back, just a bit, and Haxus immediately pushed him face-down onto the floor. Sendak yelped.

“What the quiznak, Haxus?”

“If you’re going to fall over, I would rather you didn’t crush me,” Haxus replied. Of course, he immediately sat on the small of Sendak’s back, popping the vertebrae pleasantly. He groaned, half mock-distress, half despair. “When will your old, crippled body stop being disgusting.”

“Excuse you, my body is fine. It does everything I need it to and more,” Sendak retorted. Haxus jabbed a sore spot at the base of Sendak’s neck, and he yelped again.

“Except move without hurting you, apparently,” Haxus shot back.

“Let me live, Haxus, I’ll have you know I’m a decorated commander, trained by Emperor Zarkon himself.”

“Funny, I remember another soldier calling himself Sendak, but he was conscripted early and consigned to the arena because of discipline issues.”

“Frex you, Haxus.”

“Not now, thank you.”

“I could report you for insubordination.”

“You won’t.”

“I know.”

They fell silent again, and Sendak nearly dozed off. The floor was cool under his cheek, Haxus a comforting weight on his lower back. His eye slid to half-mast, the aperture on the cybernetic shuttering as it did. Even the light hitting his face from outside was nice, warmth bleeding through his fur, his lidded eyes blocking the worst of the brightness. He doubted he could have been more comfortable if he’d tried. Haxus’s hands moved up to knead at the muscle of Sendak’s neck, and he purred throatily at the contact. 

And then, outside, there was a dull boom. Both of them jumped--well, Haxus jumped, Sendak just jerked in surprise--and were on their feet in a matter of ticks and rushing to the door of the pod. They made it just in time to see Voltron, in combined form, rising from the sand amidst a cloud of dust. Sendak’s head tilted.

“What are they doing?” he asked.

“Practicing?” Haxus suggested, sounding just as confused.

“Frexing Voltron.”

“I know. Who do they think they are?”

“Paladins, apparently.”

“Not to mention the Alteans.”

“I thought they were myths.”

“That seems to be the trouble with an apparently extinct species coming back from the dead.”

“And how would you know, Haxus?” Sendak punctuated the question with a light punch to his lieutenant’s shoulder. 

Haxus swatted him back. “Lay off, you brute, or you’re putting that prosthetic back on without my help.”

“Bully,” Sendak muttered, feeling his ears twitch back up in amusement. Haxus swatted him again, then grabbed his forearm to pull him back inside, and Sendak let himself be dragged along.

Haxus pulled him over to the control panel, opened a hatch on the side, and pointed to a spot on the floor. “Sit,” he instructed, in a tone that brooked no argument. Sendak sat.

“And what are you doing with the control panel and my arm?” he asked. Haxus had put the shoulder pieces by the control panel already, and he lugged the forearm over as well.

“Last time, this thing needed a jumpstart from the ship’s power system--remind me to tell the technician that the quintessence generators are worthless--so I’m going to jumpstart it now instead of waiting for it to glitch out and shock you.”

“I thought you got your kicks from watching me be electrified.”

“Oh, I do, but I can wait until we’re out of here to do that.”

“Hax, I did not need a confirmation that seeing me get zapped was your kink.”

Haxus cackled, reattached the shoulder piece, and hooked the cables to the control panel. Sendak was about to announce that he regretted letting Haxus be in charge of his prosthetic when the piece hummed to life, sending a kick of pain up his shoulder and a bright bolt of quintessence down into the forearm piece. The lights on the forearm flickered on, and he clenched the claws into an approximation of a fist. They felt slow and unresponsive, and he flexed them again and again until they moved properly.

“Better tell them the whole assemblage is worthless,” Sendak said, lifting the forearm. “I have never worn a prosthetic this slow, and after we get off this planet, I never will again.”

“Well, at least we left your regular one at the Hub.”

Sendak shuddered, ruff rising. “Ugh. Druids.”

Haxus detached the cables and patted his right shoulder sympathetically. “I understand the aversion. They are rather eerie.”

“You have no idea.”

There was a second boom outside, which both of them adamantly ignored. And then a third, which had Sendak’s ears tilting in irritation. Haxus hummed with amusement. A fourth boom sounded, and something in Sendak wanted to go out and shout at the little brats. Could they not stop crashing Voltron for five ticks?

A fifth boom said no, they couldn’t. 

And yet, he envied them. Zarkon had entrusted him with the Red Lion, and he’d spent the last three cycles trying to get her attention only for her to ignore him. Sendak could have sworn her hard silence had softened over the last half-cycle, a hint of her voice in his mind, and still she’d chosen some runty, half-baked alien over him. He was offended. He was wounded. Was he just not good enough? It wouldn’t have been the first time, but being publicly rejected by a Voltron Lion was definitely embarrassing. Especially when her chosen alternative was a scrawny, pale, furless alien. The last Red Paladin was a weak fool, Zarkon had told him. Sendak could still hear his emperor’s deep, bassy rumble, feel the hands pinning him to the training room floor. Her next paladin will be much greater, once I am finished with you.

Haxus’s hand brushed the side of his face, snapping him back to reality. “Sendak? Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Sendak said, shaking his head to clear it.

Haxus said nothing. His concerned expression spoke for him. Guilt coiled in Sendak’s stomach. He knew Haxus worried when he got lost in thought, and yet he couldn’t seem to keep himself focused on Arus. Maybe there had been something in the water after all. The thought had the corner of his mouth curling up, half smile and half snarl.

“How long until we can expect a call from Central Command?” he asked.

“Another varga and a half,” Haxus said. 

Sendak stood. “I’m going to--”

Haxus cut him off. “You are not going to check the perimeter.”

“Haxus--”

“I am going to check the perimeter. You stay here and wait for Central Command to get in touch with us, and don’t push yourself.”

“Alright,” Sendak said, sighing melodramatically. 

Haxus huffed his amusement and slipped out the door of the pod. Sendak was a bit concerned about his lieutenant’s eyesight--as far as he could tell, Arus’s sun was well above the horizon, bright enough to hurt their eyes by now, and Haxus didn’t have a cybernetic eye that could filter the light down to a tolerable level. If nothing else, it would take Haxus much longer to get back. He would be moving more slowly, nearly sun-blind and careful to avoid falling or being spotted. Sendak settled with his back to the control panel. There was nothing he could do that wouldn’t take him out of earshot of the controls, and he would need to be there when Central Command called. Well, he could attempt to put on his armor, and if he wanted to look presentable in front of Commander Prorok, he should be in full armor and ready for anything. If nothing else, it would conceal the brace on his right shoulder, hide the worst of his injuries.

The armor...did not go as planned. He ended up having to lie down inside the back half--which was far from comfortable--and pull the front half on top and do the latches lying down. His prosthetic was too big to get a good grip on the shoulder guard on the right, forcing him to try and do it up with his right hand. He got it eventually, but not without extensive swearing and fumbling. By contrast, the armor on his legs was much easier to put on. He even managed it one-handed, bracing with his left arm as needed to reach the latches.

He’d just finished pulling his boots on when the control panel chirruped at him. Sendak’s head snapped around. A communications window had opened up--incoming call from Central Command. Sendak hurried over and accepted it.

And immediately dropped to his knees and bowed his head, right hand centered over his chest. Emperor Zarkon himself had made the call. “Sendak,” he said, in his ancient, bassy voice.

“Emperor Zarkon,” Sendak replied, keeping his head lowered.

“You disappoint me, Sendak,” Zarkon said. “I give you a simple task--retrieve the Altean princess and the Voltron Lions--and you fail me in spectacular fashion.”

“It will not happen again, Emperor,” Sendak said.

“It should not have happened in the first place. Were you any other commander, I would leave you to die on that planet. Count yourself fortunate that I grant you an opportunity to redeem yourself. Haggar has sent one of her creations to Arus to capture Voltron. You shall stand and watch. Should it succeed, I will send a fleet to retrieve you and your lieutenant, but if it fails, the task falls to you. Fail me again, and the consequences will be worse than anything you can imagine.”

Sendak just barely kept his voice from shaking. “Vrepit sa.”

The screen went dark, and Sendak sank to the floor from his kneeling position, pressing his organic hand to his face. He was shaking and couldn’t stop. Capture Voltron? With what little he and Haxus had at their disposal? They were being set up to fail. Consequences worse than he could imagine. Dread-fueled nausea clenched in his guts, and he clamped his hand over his mouth to keep his stomach from rebelling. Another uncontrollable tremor wracked his frame. He doubled over, pressing his face against his knees.

He took a deep, gasping breath and held it, then released it slowly. Then another. And another. The shaking eased. The nausea didn’t. Sendak had left fear behind a long time ago, but he was terrified of Zarkon. He was a toy in Zarkon’s mighty hands, and nowhere was beyond the emperor’s reach. And if he failed again, his life was less than worthless. He was being set up for failure. He was going to suffer and fail and die, not necessarily in that order.

“Focus, Sendak,” he whispered into his knees. “Breathe. Think of a plan. You’ve won against odds like these before. You can do it again. Think of a plan.”

The sound of footsteps caught his ears, and he scrambled upright and turned around as Haxus re-entered the pod. Haxus looked him up and down, eyes widening.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Emperor Zarkon made the call himself,” Sendak said.

“Are we--”

“Not yet. One of Haggar’s things has been sent to capture Voltron. If it succeeds, Emperor Zarkon will send us a rescue, but if it fails he expects us to do the job.”

Haxus’s jaw dropped, and he sputtered in surprise for almost a dobosh before managing, “That--that’s--but how are we--we have four damaged sentries and a drone, how are we supposed to--”

Sendak nodded. “We have to find some way to do it, plan something in the case the thing fails.”

“We have...four damaged sentries. A drone with bomb capabilities. Five non-functional sentries. A Balmera crystal. And the two of us.” Haxus’s brow furrowed deeply. “And no ship.”

“But they have a ship,” Sendak said. “Their stronghold. It’s a ship. If we can take it, with the Lions inside--”

“And how are we going to take their ship? We don’t have the numbers for it.”

“They don’t have many either. Five paladins and the Altean princess at minimum.” He made up his mind. “Haxus, I’m going to do a little more reconnaissance. They must have a weakness somewhere for us to exploit.”

“I’m coming with,” Haxus said.

Well, there was no talking Haxus out of it when he had that look on his face. Sendak sighed and headed out, squinting at the sunlight until his cybernetic adjusted.   
********************************************************************************************************

So it turned out that the native Arusians had made contact with Voltron earlier that morning, because several members of their group were at the village Sendak had told Haxus about. The pair lurked in the dimness of the tree line, watching--well, Sendak was watching. Haxus couldn’t see much outside of the shade. The direct sunlight hurt his eyes and washed everything out to dim, blurry shapes on a blinding backdrop.

“How many of them are down there?” he asked quietly.

“Five. Three paladins, two Alteans. I assume the female is the princess,” Sendak replied.

“Only three paladins? Are you sure the second Altean isn’t one as well?”

“He isn’t wearing the same uniform as the paladins, and there are only three Lions here. Blue, red...the third must be yellow, since the other arm is supposedly green.”

Haxus squinted. It didn’t help. “What are they doing?”

“Standing...being friendly with the natives...hm. One of the big natives has approached them. It appears to be in some sort of leadership role? They’re negotiating now...what the quiznak.”

“What?”

“One of the natives was...dancing, I think...and the female Altean said something. The natives have started a fire now...oh, that’s interesting. They almost threw one of their own into the flames.”

“That’s...odd. They must be more primitive than we first assumed.”

“Yes. They’ve stopped trying to sacrifice themselves now...the paladins and Alteans are mingling with the Arusians. They must be cementing an alliance with the natives.”

“But not all of them. Black and green are not here.”

“I wonder what they’re up to.”

“Is Champion down there?”

Sendak shifted, leaning forward. “No. I recognize Blue and Yellow from their transmission of surrender, and the Red Paladin is unfamiliar to me. Champion boarded the cruiser to help steal the Red Lion and free prisoners, and if I recall correctly, his armor was the darkest. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say he’s the Black Paladin.”

Haxus gulped. “They put that bloodthirsty creature in charge?”

“Haxus, you follow a bloodthirsty creature,” Sendak said teasingly.

“You at least direct your bloodlust at the right targets. I don’t think Champion knows where to aim his.”

“Oh, trust me, Champion knows who he wants to kill.”

The air shuddered, a dull boom buffeting Haxus’s ears. He looked around, squinting at the light and seeking the source of the sound.

“Something just entered the atmosphere,” Sendak said.

“What is it?”

“The design is Galra, but it’s not a traditional ship. The shape is wrong.”

Haxus sucked in a breath. “It must be Haggar’s thing, then.”

Sendak nodded. “It’s heading towards the wreck of the cruiser.”

“Makes sense. They can track the cruiser’s location and have the thing home in on it so it lands reasonably close to its target.”

“How big do you think it is?” Sendak asked. His head tilted, presumably tracking the oncoming craft across the sky.

“How big is the ship?”

“Big.”

“That’s not a size.”

“It looks like it could hold Voltron.”

Haxus hissed in a breath between his teeth. “That’s big.”

“Hopefully it can take Voltron,” Sendak said. “Though...I have a plan should it fail.”

“You do?”

“...Most of a plan. The rest could stand clarification.”

“We can work through it if the thing fails to defeat Voltron.”

Something crashed, presumably the craft landing. Haxus felt it in his feet, the ground quaking beneath the impact. 

“It’s landed,” Sendak said. More thudding sounds. “And the craft is opening, and--Lords of the Astral, what is that?”

“What is what?”

“It’s huge,” Sendak whispered.

“What is it?!”

“Haggar’s thing. It looks like...like a gigantic robotic gladiator.”

“How big is gigantic?” There were more loud crashing sounds, the screech of metal on metal and duller thudding of metal on earth, and something else, bright clangs and a low droning.

“The Black Lion just jumped onto its shoulders, so...Voltron-sized, roughly. But it doesn’t move like a sentry. It’s too versatile.”

“Could it have a pilot?”

“I don’t know.” 

There was something in Sendak’s tone that made Haxus nervous, something that sounded like fear. He didn’t dare look at his commander’s face, dreading what he would see there. Why would Sendak be afraid of Haggar’s thing? He’d known Sendak most of their adult lives, and there were very, very few things in the universe he was actually afraid of. Temporarily startled or intimidated by? Yes. Afraid of? No. 

More metallic screeching and the scream of laser fire.

“The other three Lions just joined the fight,” Sendak said. “That’s all five...and they’re going to form Voltron.”

“Can the thing handle it?”

Droning. Clang. Clang. Droning. Crunch.

“Apparently, yes. It just smashed Voltron into the ground.”

Was it just Haxus, or were the sounds of combat getting closer? He turned to look at Sendak, who could actually see the fight, to gauge his reaction. His huge ears were lowering slowly, gaze fixed on the fight. Yes, yes they were, and it made Sendak nervous. Another crash sounded, almost directly overhead. Haxus grabbed Sendak’s shoulder.

“Commander, I don’t think we should be here,” he said. Sendak nodded, and the next thing Haxus knew they were halfway down the other side of the hill, away from the village. The crashes and clangs overhead faded behind them. Branches whipped at his face. 

They didn’t go far, just down the hill and up another, crouching under a stony outcropping of rock for shelter from the fight overhead. Haxus saw none of it, but Sendak kept up a running narration of the battle--apparently it had looked like Voltron was going to lose right up until it pulled a sword out of thin air and sliced through the main body of Haggar’s thing, which detonated violently and drowned out Sendak telling him it had exploded. Sendak’s eyes had been on the fight the whole time, and he’d looked exhilarated and hopeful right up until the explosion. He’d masked it, but Haxus was watching his ears and saw them flatten against his skull. They were going to have to retrieve Voltron now, just the two of them. After Voltron disbanded and went back to their stronghold, the pair slunk back to their pod.

Haxus settled on the floor, wishing he had something to tinker with, and said, “So what was that plan you mentioned earlier, Commander?”

“What do you know about Altean spacecrafts?” Sendak asked.

“Only what theory was taught in my engineering courses before I joined the military.”

“Did your courses tell you what they drew power from?”

Haxus scowled thoughtfully. “Not quintessence--that technique was only perfected a thousand years into the expansion of the Empire. If I remember correctly, they utilized Balmera crystals.”

Sendak grinned, baring his fangs. “Then my plan will work, so long as they take the bait.”

“The bait?”

“There are seven of them, and, counting the sentries, six of us. We need to cut their numbers and thin their defenses without risking ourselves, and the fastest way to do that is to split their attention and get inside while their guard is down. And after watching them today, I know how to do it.” Sendak pointed in the general direction of the Arusian village. “We repair the non-functional sentries enough to look functional and lead a mock-attack on the natives. If they and Voltron are indeed allies, they will be compelled to help the Arusians, thinning the castle defenses. And now that I know that castle runs on a power source we possess, I have the rest of the plan. We need to destroy their crystal and shut down their power system. If we time it right, the Lions will be shut inside, forcing them to go out and handle our feint on foot, while we go inside, install our own crystal, and turn their stronghold against them.”

“And what if they aren’t allies with the Arusians?”

“We’ve still destroyed their power supply, depriving them of most of their weaponry and any barrier to keep us out. We can handle the paladins ourselves if we must.”

“And how are we going to destroy their crystal?”

“Are you up for a little infiltration and demolition?”

Haxus huffed a laugh. “Finally, you make a plan that holds water. I’m impressed.”

“Don’t patronize me, Haxus.” His tone may have been annoyed, but Sendak’s ears were up, hopeful and pleased. “I told you we were going to get off this planet.”

“We haven’t yet,” Haxus retorted.

“We will.” He paused. “We should strike tonight, while they’re still fresh from their victory and less likely to be on guard.”

“Then what are we waiting on?” Haxus said, standing and hurrying over to the non-functional sentries. He could fit the pieces back together with ease, but getting them to stand upright on their own would be tricky. Perhaps a pole? There was nothing that could be done about the rents in armor and head-pieces, so any setup would require positioning the sentries far enough from the edge of the village to keep their ruse intact without closer investigation.

Sendak settled beside him to help, locating missing pieces of sentry and tools and laying them out so Haxus had easy access to anything he needed. His expression was one Haxus recognized from the early days of their acquaintance: ears tilted aggressive and alert, mouth curled in a smile that exposed fangs, thick ruff rising--a young soldier, eager for battle. Haxus had been deeply fond of him back then, and the return of that expression had excitement tingling like fire along his limbs.

That look had become vanishingly rare after Sendak’s stint in Central Command under Zarkon--which he still refused to talk about decafebes later--too much time spent on ships and not enough on the ground and fighting, like Sendak was meant for. Haxus blamed military training at a young age for that bloodlust. Whoever decided to raise cubs as weapons should have been shot with his own blaster, really. In the reproductive organs. To prevent him from ever having his own offspring to ruin--yes, ruin. Harsh as it sounded, Sendak was the only well-adjusted military-reared soldier Haxus had ever met--after a lot of hard work on both their parts--and even now he had moments that made Haxus wonder how he even functioned as a Galra.

The broken sentries came together slowly but surely, just intact enough to look functional, which was really all that mattered. None of them would even activate at this point--Haxus had removed power cores and vital pieces to repair the less damaged ones, and then pocketed the spare cores to replace the ones in the functioning sentries should they run down on the way back to Central Command. But a show of force--any show of force--would be more than enough to scare the Arusians, and good enough would have to be good enough  
********************************************************************************************************

They started moving into position around sunset. The functional sentries dragged the broken ones to a position near the Arusian village but out of sight of the natives. At the signal--whenever Haxus managed to destroy the Castle’s crystal--they would position the decoys and set fire to the houses to simulate an attack, then fall back to a position near the castle, where Sendak would be waiting with their crystal for Haxus’s signal that their enemy’s defenses had lowered enough for them to move in. After that it should be easy, or so Haxus had said. How flying a ten-thousand-year-old ship when you couldn’t even read the language would be easy, Sendak had no idea, but he trusted Haxus to know--or at least figure out--what he was doing.

He made it to their first position just after moonrise and set up for reconnaissance. The castle was brightly lit, standing out starkly against the night sky. Small shapes milled around the base--hard to tell at this distance, but he thought they might be Arusians. They occasionally disappeared or emerged from a lighted entry into the castle--a door of some sort, Sendak thought. A tall one. Voltron was going to make this easy on them, it seemed.

Haxus dropped in beside him, boots crunching softly on pebbles underfoot. “Commander, the sentries are in position around the Arusian village,” he said.

“Luck is on our side,” Sendak replied, flicking an ear. “Look. The castle defenses are down. The door is wide open. With all the Arusians coming in and out, it should be nothing for you to infiltrate.”

Haxus’s scanner-tablet whirred and hummed distractingly. “I may not have to,” he said. “The small one has a Galra drone they’ve repurposed. If I can just get close enough to clone its signature code, I can send our drone in undetected with the bomb installed.”

“I knew you would figure something out, Haxus.” He smiled, baring fangs. 

Haxus scrambled off again, vanishing back into the undergrowth, and Sendak settled into a more comfortable position. He rested his prosthetic against an outcropping of rock to take the dragging weight off his shoulder. No sense in straining it more than he needed to now when he knew there was a fight coming. The brace on his right shoulder shifted uncomfortably under his armor, but it didn’t hurt him--he was almost glad Haxus had insisted he take another dose of painkillers before they attacked the castle. He could ignore pain in the heat of battle, but there was no sense in feeling it until everything was over and they were safely in the air.

He waited. And waited. More movement--Champion emerged from the Castle, pacing around what Sendak assumed was a perimeter. His cybernetic focused in on the movement, zooming in on Champion. His posture spoke of nerves, and Sendak couldn’t blame him. Champion was a fighter. Having his base of operations open like that would unnerve Sendak too, especially if he’d been in a fight earlier that day. The smallest paladin, ‘green’ if memory served, wandered up to Champion, stopping an arm’s length away. Something small hovered over their shoulder--a drone from the looks of it. He caught a glimpse of Haxus crouched behind the rubble near the castle, his dim shape nearly merging with the stone. Then something detached itself from him and floated towards their enemy’s base, and Haxus scrambled off and disappeared from sight.

And then he was back, dropping in beside Sendak again. “I’ve sent the drone in,” he said, gaze fixed on the scanner’s screen. “It should be in position in ten doboshes.”

“The sentries are go for the diversion on your mark,” Sendak replied.

Haxus hummed. “You won’t need my mark. The bomb should be powerful enough that you’ll hear it when it goes off.”

“Excellent.”

“You are entirely too excited about a bomb.”

“I’m excited about burning a village to the ground too. And stealing an enemy ship. Especially the ship. How many cycles since the last time we did anything like this?”

“Try decafebes,” Haxus replied.

They fell silent for a little while. Then, faintly, a rumbling noise. Small, Arusian shapes began flooding out of the castle as the blue exterior lights dimmed and went out. Sendak pressed the communicator button, signalling the sentries at the village to set up the decoys and begin the fire. His lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl.

Finally. They could begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we go, back into canon territory. One chapter to go!  
> A side note on time measurements--I began writing this back in February, before we had canon time measurements longer that a week (er, movement) and? Turns out I hate the canon ones. So, for future reference: a 'cycle' is roughly a year (300 days), and a 'decafebe' (Altean deca-phoeb transliterated into Galra and from there into English) is closer to a decade.


	4. Nadir

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright. Last chapter. This one...was emotional to write, and also made me unable to watch S1E5 ever again without breaking down over Haxus. Y'all are going to hate me.

Haxus watched as Voltron deserted their castle one small group at a time. He watched as a pod took off from around the back of the castle, exiting the atmosphere for destinations and purposes unknown. He watched as a small group of them--three at the most, though he couldn’t have said which three from his current position--milled around the doors, before two split off and headed towards the burning Arusian village. Then, when no more left, he signalled Sendak, who emerged from his hiding place, and led the sentries towards the Castle of Lions. Their crystal had been at his position, since Sendak had hidden alone, and two of the sentries towed it behind him. They fell into step with ease--Sendak leading the group, then the unburdened sentries, then the two with the crystal, and Haxus in the rear.

Movement flickered in the darkened doorway--a shape in pale armor, glowing in the moonlight. A shock of white glowed too--Champion’s forelock. The human sprinted out, stopping in the center of the door as if to block their path. He glowered at them. Sendak halted paces away, and Haxus and the sentries stopped behind him.

“Stand aside,” Sendak growled.

“No,” Champion snapped. The short alien took a fighting stance, right arm beginning to glow. “You’re not getting in.”

“Yes, I am.” Sendak hauled back and launched his prosthetic across the intervening space, grabbing Champion and dragging him out of the doorway. He shrieked and snarled the whole way, right up until Sendak dropped him at his feet and raised the forearm piece for a crushing blow. Haxus winced. That was going to be nasty to clean out of the prosthetic later.

Champion dodged. Flipped backwards out of range, landed in a crouch. He swung his right arm out to the side, druid-purple arching up the forearm. The he darted forwards, faster than expected. Much faster. Sendak threw his prosthetic up in defense. Champion’s hand screeched down the metal. He swung again. The prosthetic went wide.

Sendak’s form was off. Very, very off. His core was wide open, slung behind the weight of his forearm. He was on the defensive, narrowly dodging Champion’s blows. The short alien was fast, terrifyingly so, nimble as a fighter in flight. He weaved and bobbed and struck like lighting. 

Then he punched.

Sendak punched back.

Their fists collided between them, arms extended to their full lengths. Both were panting. Haxus couldn’t see Sendak’s face, but Champion’s was clear. Two-toned eyes narrowed aggressively. His mouth was open, dull teeth gleaming as he gasped for air.

“I see you spent some time with the druids,” Sendak ground out. Haxus knew that tone, but from where? “They do love to experiment. Too bad you didn’t get the latest model.”

That was it. He was bluffing, trying to intimidate Champion with a glitchy, uncooperative prosthetic.

The quintessence rope binding the two pieces surged, hurling Champion back into the castle. Sendak was after him in a tick, launching the arm again and flinging himself inside after his opponent. Haxus sprinted after him, waving the sentries on.

He heard the exact moment things went wrong. Sendak bellowed. Metal clanged on metal--Sendak’s armor on the floor. Champion was shouting too, a war whoop, a promise of death. Haxus had to stop him. But with what--?

A flash of white in the corner of his eye. A second paladin, sprawled by the wall, apparently unconscious. Must have been caught in the explosion. Haxus grabbed the runty alien and dragged them into the main space.

Sendak and Champion were at each other’s throats. Literally. Two sets of prosthetics, two glowing fingertips, two sets of bared teeth and shuddering breaths. Champion was less than a finger’s length away from Sendak’s exposed neck. Haxus’s heart was in his throat.

“Let him go, or your friend won’t make it,” Haxus said, dropping the other paladin. Champion turned around, horror scribing lines on his face, and the second he looked away Sendak hauled off and punched him. The alien slid across the floor, sprawling limp and unmoving from the blow.

Sendak lurched to his feet. Haxus could hear his shuddering breaths and read the pain in the lines of his body, but that was definitely a victorious smirk crawling over his features.

“Voltron,” Sendak declared, “is ours.”

“Let’s get to the bridge,” Haxus said. Sendak nodded.

“Take the prisoners with us,” he said to the sentries. The two unencumbered ones shuffled forward, dragging the unconscious paladins behind them.

Nothing else emerged to strike, so Haxus hurried up to walk beside Sendak. “Are you alright?” he asked.

“You’ll need to check my right shoulder once we’re in the air,” Sendak replied. “I landed on it when he threw me, and may have re-injured it.”

“I will,” Haxus said.

They made it to the bridge with no problems, and after confirming that the area was clear, Haxus directed the sentries to drop the prisoners and connect their crystal to the base containing the remains of the damaged one. He moved around to the controls, waiting for them to finish hooking everything up. Connector cables crunched into the crystal.

“Power up the castle,” Sendak commanded. 

The wall screens lit up, proudly displaying the Imperial Crest, and the crystal brightened from dim light to brilliant violet, throwing new beams and shadows across the room. The control panels flickered on. Machinery elsewhere in the castle hummed and droned as it reactivated, ringing in Haxus’s ears. Lights came on in the darkened hallways, dim and pale lavender to suit photosensitive Galra eyes. Haxus pulled up security feeds one after the other until, finally, he found the ones they were looking for.

“The Lions are all in their bays,” Sendak said. “Raise the particle barrier. We need to keep them out and begin the launch sequence as quickly as possible.”

Thank goodness the Alteans liked diagrams and symbols better than words. The Castle controls weren’t the easiest he’d operated, but they were far from the most difficult thing Haxus had commandeered. He clicked the particle barrier and navigated the dialogue window with ease.

“Particle barrier is up. Launch sequence initiated, but it will be a few doboshes while it warms up.”

“Alright,” Sendak said. “Make contact with Emperor Zarkon.” 

Haxus found the communicators relatively quickly. They linked up to the ICN better than he expected, and after he input his security code, the line to Central Command opened up. The feed was awful, grainy and lined, but Zarkon’s ancient face was recognizable.

“Sendak,” he said. Haxus was almost glad not to be acknowledged.

“My mission is complete,” Sendak said. “I have captured the Altean castle along with all of the Voltron Lions. I am currently preparing for launch, and will be delivering them all to you shortly.”

“This news is most pleasing,” Zarkon rumbled. “You have done your duty. Vrepit sa.”

“Vrepit sa,” Sendak replied, saluting. The feed closed out. “Haxus,” he said. “Ready the Castle for takeoff.”

“Yes, Commander,” Haxus replied, bending over the controls and puzzling out their meanings. Even if he couldn’t read Altean, they were nice. The Alteans had known what they were doing. Some eager, curious of his brain wanted to play with it. The sensible part pushed the urge aside, and he worked his way through dialogue box after dialogue box.

“Running main cluster activation sequence,” he said, hearing Sendak shift behind him to get a closer look. “Powering up for launch. We should be ready in three...two...one. Ready for launch.”

“Then launch,” Sendak said. “Let’s go.”

The Castle rumbled underfoot, shaking to its foundations. Machinery hummed and whined and growled, thrusters beginning to roar somewhere deep beneath them. Sendak rumbled behind him, a pleased and throaty growl. They were getting out. They were getting out.

And then, suddenly, they weren’t. The roar died away.

Haxus spun around. “The main engine just shorted out,” he said, staring wide-eyed at Sendak. 

The commander bared his teeth and hurried over, pulling up the security feed for the central turbine. Nothing. Then the camera focused on a dim shape by the door, hurrying out into the main body of the ship. One of the paladins. The small one. The one with the stolen drone. Sendak snarled with frustration.

“We have a saboteur,” he growled. “I want them found and terminated.”

The controls winked at him. “Commander, I’ve received a transmission generating from somewhere inside.” He opened the dialogue, and a high-pitched, lilting voice echoed from the control panel.

“There’s not much time before they get the ship running again,” they said. “You must shut off the particle barrier so we can get in.”

“You got it,” a second voice said. This one was much younger-sounding. “Tell me what to do.”

“The particle barrier generator is beneath the main hull,” the first voice replied. It continued its explanation, telling the paladin the route to the generator room. Haxus and Sendak locked eyes.

“She’s telling the intruder how to take down our defenses,” he said.

“Yes,” said Sendak. His ears tilted, clearly thinking. “But she’s also giving away their location.” He turned to the sentries guarding the door. “Find that room. Kill the paladin.” The sentries went, and Sendak turned back to Haxus. “Get working on the engines. This ship must rise before day’s end.”

Haxus nodded and dove back into the controls, pulling up diagnostics and running tests on the engine system. He kept his ears alert, though--half anticipating the rogue paladin to drop from a ceiling vent and harass them on the bridge--and heard Champion stirring. Sendak obviously heard as well, because his footsteps moved towards the downed paladins and snarled. Champion made a sound of resistance. A tick later, he cried out, and Haxus heard a set of cuffs activate. The alien snarled what were likely profanities at Sendak, who growled back. 

“Commander, will you come here a tick?” Haxus said, turning to look at the pair.

Sendak, of course, nudged Champion with the toe of his boots before padding over. “What is it?”

“I’m going to have to go down and repair the engines at the central turbine itself. Could you take over the controls up here?”

“Yes. Set up communications as soon as you get down there.” He hesitated, then leaned down and bumped his forehead against Haxus’s. Their noses brushed, and Haxus was tempted, just for a moment, to press their mouths together. Then Sendak pulled away and whispered, “Be safe.”

“I will,” Haxus replied. 

********************************************************************************************************

Sendak waited anxiously at the control panel, tapping his claws lightly against the surface. There was nothing to be worried about, he told himself. The rogue paladin was either dead or distracted by now. Haxus would know what to do. He would be fine. And yet dread coiled in his gut. Just having that paladin running loose on the ship, not knowing where they were or what they were doing, was nerve-wracking.

An icon popped up on the control panel, something similar to the communications symbol he’d seen Haxus use before, and he tapped on it quickly.

“Haxus at the central turbine. Commander Sendak, do you copy?”

“Loud and clear, Haxus,” Sendak replied, ears lowering in relief. The movement sent a spike of pain lancing down the back of his skull, and he bit his lip. He hadn’t told Haxus he’d struck his head on the floor when Champion threw him--no sense in worrying his lieutenant until they were in the air and could take care of it without worrying about sabotage. “What do you need me to do?”

“Just monitor things up there,” Haxus said. “It should ask about reconnections with the bridge when I get the turbine back online. I’ll help you through it should you need me.”

“Alright.”

Haxus hummed a little on his end. Sendak heard the clatter of nails on control panel, the whir of machinery, Haxus humming and muttering to himself. “Powering subpanels,” he said.

A dialogue box cropped up on Sendak’s screen, and he cautiously worked his way through it. “Subpanel energy transducer is go,” he replied.

“Yes, sir. Opening pathway to link with bridge. Initializing main cluster reboot.” More humming, moe clicks and clacks. “Initialization complete. I’m set for main power up.”

“The bridge is go,” Sendak said, clicking the dialogue that appeared.

“Powering up,” Haxus said, and there was something satisfied in his tone. 

Sendak grinned. They were ready to go, just as soon as Haxus got back to the bridge. They could leave Arus, at long last.

Haxus took a harsh breath on the other end of the communicator. “Sir? Something is wrong,” he said. Silence. Then a shriek of agony.

“Haxus!” Sendak shouted, gripping the sides of the panel.

No response. Then indistinct voices, people speaking just outside the communicator’s range. One of them was Haxus, and Sendak would bet the last three GAC in his account that the other was the rogue paladin. He turned to go down and help his lieutenant and met Champion’s gaze. The little alien was staring at him, eyes narrowed. Sendak’s guts clenched. If he left, Champion would undoubtedly find some way to sabotage the bridge. And he certainly couldn’t risk taking him along with.

“Frex,” he whispered, bared his teeth and flattened his ears at Champion in a show of dominance. Champion hiked his shoulders and looked away. Haxus bellowed on the other end of the line. Then the paladin shouted.

Then Haxus yelped, which was an odd noise for him to make. Sendak tensed, curling his organic hand into a fist. The claws bit into his palm-pad. Haxus shrieked on the other end, and he clenched his fist harder, shutting his eye tightly.

“Come on, Hax,” he whispered, too quietly for anyone to hear. “Don’t fail me.”

Then both voices were screaming on the other end of the line, though he couldn’t make out what was going on. He didn’t dare pull up the security feeds. Fear and dread coiled in his gut, tying his insides in knots. The line fell silent. Sendak took a deep breath.

“Haxus,” he said. “Report in.”

The voice that replied was that of the paladin. “Haxus is gone, and you’re next!” 

He shoved the anger and grief aside to process later. “You slowed me down, but this ship is mine! You will turn yourself over to me immediately!” Warmth trickled in the palm of his organic hand--he’d tightened his fist hard enough to draw blood with his claws.

“Never!” the paladin snapped, and his rage froze over.

“Well then, maybe your leader can convince you,” he hissed, turning up the communicator’s radius and stepping over to Champion. The alien glowered up at him from a kneeling position on the floor.

“What do you want,” Champion hissed.

“Your friend wanted to hear from you,” Sendak replied. This was for Haxus, he thought. The paladins would pay for his life with their suffering. His cybernetic fist crackled with electricity.

“Shiro?” the rogue gasped on the other end.

Champion--Shiro’s--eyes widened. “Pidge?” he gasped. “Pidge, don’t listen to--”

Sendak clamped his prosthetic hand around Shiro’s upper body, and the alien shrieked, spasming in agony. He gripped hard enough to leave marks on the armor as the paladin screamed and jerked in his grasp. He held on for nearly twenty ticks, until the rogue paladin cried out in protest on the other end of the line, and then he released his grip and let Shiro fall back to the floor.

“You can make it stop,” he snarled into the communicator. “Turn yourself in. His suffering is in your hands.”

Then he clicked the communicator off. The rogue would turn themself in eventually, and he had a ship to get off the ground. The central turbine was still operational--the paladin hadn’t sabotaged it again, apparently--and he began slowly working his way through the launch sequence.

A few clicks later he stopped, dug his claws into the side of the panel. Haxus. Grief punctured his chest. Haxus was gone. Haxus was dead. Haxus was dead. He’d failed his lieutenant...his friend, his closest companion. Haxus, whom he would have fought and killed and died for; Haxus, who just the night before had taken care of him when he was too weak to do it himself; Haxus, dear and dreadful smartass, technological genius, his closest--his only real friend...gone. The first hint of a sob bubbled up in his throat, and he choked it back down. Not here. Not now. He whipped away from the controls.

Only a modicum of self-control kept Sendak from ripping Shiro’s flesh from his bones. He wanted to so badly he couldn’t see straight, wanted the alien’s blood on his hands as a small tithe, a fraction of what they owed him for Haxus’s death. He loomed over Shiro, glaring down with everything he had, organic fist shaking with barely-contained wrath. He was going to hurt Shiro. His words might not have stung like Haxus’s would have, but he would hammer the paladin with them until he shattered.

“I’m impressed that you managed to escape,” he hissed. “Perhaps it would be worth a trip to your planet to see if the rest of your kind have your spirit.” Words felt coarse and dry in his throat. Meaningless. He wanted blood. “Of course, they will all be broken, just like you. Now that we have Voltron, every planet--every race--all share the same fate.” He stepped even closer, leaning down and grazing his cybernetic hand against Shiro’s cheek. “Don’t worry,” he added, almost crooning. “You and your companions won’t have to watch.”

Shiro made a muffled noise of distress, like he was holding back a cry, and Sendak scored his claws lightly down the alien’s cheek. Just barely enough pressure to break the skin. Red beaded up on his claws and in their wake, and he raised the cybernetic, made eye contact with Shiro, and licked the blood from their tips. It tasted of nothing so much as salt and iron. Shiro shuddered and looked away.

Sendak made it back to the control panel in time to watch the particle barrier come down. Damn the rogue, they must have taken it out while he’d been venting his...frustration. No matter. Let the paladins come. He was angry enough to take them. He began work on the launch sequence, making sure everything was in order. A new dialogue cropped up--the security feed from the hallway to the bridge, the rogue paladin making their way up to face him. Footsteps. He whirled around. The slight shape of the alien hovered in the doorway.

He lunged, grabbing the floor in the doorway with his cybernetic and launching himself after the paladin. They dodged, leaping aside, and Sendak continued after it for three more paces before hesitating. There was no scent. He spun around.

And there was the real thing, crouching before Shiro. Oh no, you don’t. He launched the arm again, grabbing the runty alien and hurrying back onto the bridge to meet his arm before it could rejoin the rest of him. He held the paladin up over his head, digging his claws into their armor, snarling viciously.

“You really thought your little hologram trick would work with me?” he bit out. The paladin struggled in his grip, little cries of distress breaking from them.

More footsteps behind him. He turned. Two more stood in the doorway, the Red Paladin and the Altean princess. He raised the small one for them to see.

“Stand back,” he snarled.

And then, pain. Searing agony in his right shoulder and upper back, force shoving him forward and off-balance. He lurched, dropping his victim, and spun towards the source of the attack. The Blue Paladin. The one he had not restrained. They were partially upright, pointing some sort of gun directly at him. Then they crumpled back, the weapon vanishing.

Champion lunged for him in an instant, and Sendak swung and punched him backwards. Then the Red Paladin was on him. He blocked a sword-swing with the bracers on his organic arm. A foot collided with his ribs. Pain flared. He lost his breath for a tick, long enough for the paladin to rear back for another strike. He barely got his prosthetic in the way, then grabbed his attacker and made to throw them.

And then more pain--this time from the nerves in his stump as the quintessence ribbon between the two pieces of his prosthetic were severed. He screamed incomprehensibly with pain and rage and lunged for the smallest paladin, the rogue, his tormentor, Haxus's murderer. The brat would pay.

He kicked at them, foot slamming against a particle shield and knocking the paladin backwards. They aimed something at him, a small hand-held weapon. A bright streak of something launched from the tip, wrapping around his ankles, and then lightning arced up his body. He had no breath to scream. The Red Paladin swung for him, and he caught the sword, ignoring the cut on his palm. Pain. Fury.

He flattened his ears. He would not back down.

And then the Altean was shouting, and the Red Paladin used his grip on their weapon as leverage to kick him backwards--directly in the ribcage, again--and he was on his back beside the crystal. He flipped back to his feet. Blue light, all around him. A particle barrier. Sendak slammed his fist against it, snarling, until blood oozed from his knuckles. 

Then he stopped, lowering his shoulders and glaring out. His breath came in harsh, ragged gasps, each one sending aftershocks of pain through his chest. Both of his shoulders hurt--burned, really--and his head throbbed with pain. He dropped to his knees, planting his battered hand on the ground, and heaved for air. Everything hurt. Everything. An attempt to catalogue his injuries would be worthless. The world around him blurred, and half of it went dark as his cybernetic eye shuttered itself. He shut the organic one, too, squeezing it closed as he struggled to regain his breath and his self-control.

And couldn’t. It was too much. He opened his eye again. The paladins and the Altean stared down at him from the other side of the barrier. Angry faces. Condemning faces. He locked his eyes with Shiro’s.

Darkness closed in on the edges of his vision, and the last thing he felt before it claimed him was his face striking the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have mentioned this somewhere in the comments on chapter 3 and on my blog, but I thought I'd put it in the end notes just to make it official: I'm working on a Sendak redemption arc! I have the first draft completed and am currently editing and rewriting sections of it, so you can expect the first chapter of that as early as next week Sunday (October 1st), though it will be out for certain by October 8th, under the title "St. Erasmus' Fire".  
> In the meantime, feel free to hit up my blog! I post art there, and am currently working on meta, worldbuilding, and character background posts when I have time.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I suppose it's a bit late to get on the hype train for these two, but...here I am. Updates on Sunday.  
> Come yell at me on Tumblr @shadow-djinni, and feel free to drop a comment--I take critiques.


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